Mainframe, MVS and zOS Discussion

I'm from Italy, and works since 2009 in Cobol/CICS/IMS/DB2, and now i have an opportunity for teach these to others people... i'm excited, but know it's not easy-work!

Hi Marco and welcome to the Forums,

Good to know that you've work experience with COBOL, CICS, IMS and DB2. Getting hands on with IMS and DB2 both is rare. And by chance did you miss to include "JCL"?!

OTOH, I believe teaching is a totally different ball game altogether than sitting in front of the "Intel inside" and writing codes.

Thanks Anuj... yeah i gain experiences with JCL too, obviously... and when they give me blank paper, i prefer to use ICETOOL (extension of DFSORT) rather than ICEMAN (DFSORT), rather than write specific Cobol program for batching process.
Other things i prefer to use it's multifetch, rather than single fetch, or xml generate rather than ispect for build sentences.
Never used REXX and Assembler, but had experiences with TELON and Easytrieve, and other stuff.
I agree with your observing, when i approached at mainframe i did a course of one year, but i had learned more from collegues that starts this job in the '70 then in this course, and today i know only one things: i have a world to know!

Personally, I also find ICETOOL a very powerful utility; my work does not require to use it a lot these days though.

REXX is also one of the most versatile language and good news is that you've got PC and Open Source implementation of it too. For assembler, suggest you have a look at these links from the Forum:

Hercules, z390, zCOBOL, CBT Tape Files.
How can I learn Assembler?
Resources for Assembler.

Hopefully, they might interest you and can be helpful as well.