Mainframe, MVS and zOS Discussion

I'll admit that the last time I dabbled with COBOL and Java together, the COBOL compiler hadn't been updated to support 64 bits! It appears that the COBOL to JNI interface has yet to receive an update. I've not seen any examples of how to call Java methods directly using the JNI services from COBOL,...

I don't think QMF has any sort of limiter on rows retrieved, but any given query will give you the same result no matter where you call it from. I'd suggest an "ORDER BY" or "GROUP BY" clause to ensure the data is returned in the order you expect. Updates to the table will alter ...

Hello. I believe the IBM suggested default is "IGYvrm.HFS", but that may not necessarily be where it is on your local installation. You'll need your friendly local sysprogs to mount it if it's not already there, plus I'd suggest that it also needs to be added to the "BPXPRMxx" me...

Hello. It would depend upon what you mean by "top 5 rows" and through what method you are trying to access the data. If you are entering SQL through something like SPUFI, then I'm not aware of a way to limit the number of rows returned purely through the clauses on a "SELECT" sta...

Hello.

The format is X'....', for example:

Hello. There's not a simple one-statement solution for this that I'm aware of, so it would have to be something along these lines: 01 WA-MESSAGE PIC X(11) VALUE 'Indian Army'. 01 WA-SUB PIC S9(4) COMP. . . PERFORM VARYING WA-SUB FROM 1 BY 1 UNTIL WA-SUB > 11 DISPLAY WA-MESSAGE (WA-SUB:1) END-PERFORM...

Hello. DFSMS data classes are installation specific and, as far as I am aware, there are no standard definitions shipped with z/OS. It might be that your system has been set up be very restrictive in what you can do with storage allocation, or it might be quite lax. Either way, there's not much I ca...

...just realised I missed the bit about the decimal point. You do that just by splitting the "PIC +9(nn)" definiton with a decimal point, e.g. "PIC +9(5).99" will give you a seven digit number with two decimal places.

Yes, Sysplex is multiple LPARs working together. When they're not working together, then an LPAR is just an LPAR running an independent system. z/VM is a separate operating system that will run in its own independent LPAR. It essentially does what PR/SM does without the need to meddle with the machi...

Hello. Declare it as "PIC +9(nn)" where "nn" is the length you need. You can also do something like "+999,999,999" if you want the output delimited with commas. The "9" causes the number to be displayed no matter what. A "Z" is used if you want leadi...

Something you can do to make your job reusable is put the inline procedure into one of your own PDS(E) datasets somewhere. If you put the block from the "PROC" to "PEND" statements into it's own member, you can use the "JCLLIB" statement to add the PDS to the list of PR...

Second question, is not MVS is what works for zOS and z/VM is separate? z/OS (and OS/390 before it) is a bundling of MVS with various other bits of software which were originally ordered and charged separately. The MVS bit is the core control program onto which everything else is built. z/VM is a s...

What's the benefit of doing this? is not it that Mainframes were built for reliability and speed and if that is what z/VM takes away then what's the benefit of doing it? I mean when it's all virtualized and not works on real hardware, then how stability is maintained? Mainframes are big, expensive ...

Hello. In general, there should not be much change required to the JCL for an upgrade of the compiler. It's rare for the inputs/outputs required to change between versions. The one thing that will change between versions is going to be the load dataset for the compiler on the "STEPLIB" DD ...

z/VM is IBM's virtualisation product. When you sign on z/VM your userid is running a virtual machine into which you can IPL an operating system. That operating system will see itself as running on bare metal. It's basically like VMWare or VirtualBox for a mainframe. Most users will run a system call...

Hello. LPARs are basically to do with partitioning a machine. It allows you to run multiple operating systems on the same physical box. It is essentially z/VM in microcode. You can partition up the machine for the operating systems you are running and specify which resources you want to dedicate to ...

Hello.

Would I be correct in assuming that you are looking to test terminal-based transactions? If that's the case, IMS TM or CICS?

Somewhere in your program you should have an "EXEC SQL INCLUDE SQLCA" statement to include the field definition for the SQL Communications Area. For COBOL, it looks like this: 01 SQLCA. 05 SQLCAID PIC X(8). 05 SQLCABC PIC S9(9) COMP-5. 05 SQLCODE PIC S9(9) COMP-5. 05 SQLERRM. 49 SQLERRML P...

The information you require will be in the SQL Communication Area (SQLCA). If you are running a utility like SPUFI, it should dump that information for you in the output. If this is from an application program, then you'll need to find the SQLCA in the storage dump. Assuming it's one of IBM's compil...

Assuming that your SSH command is working for other target systems and you've a valid userid/password, then it would probably be best to go through your local support in order to get the problem resolved. "Permission denied" usually implies that you don't have access to something and there...