More mainframe information

Last week I wrote about the excellent Arcati Yearbook 2006 at www.arcati.com/yearbook.html, but that isn’t the only source of mainframe information on the Web. There are numerous Web sites created by mainframe enthusiasts out there, many of which are well worth a look. This is a topic that I intend to return to in future blogs.

Http://www.mximvs.com/ is home to Rob Scott’s OS/390 and MVS resources. The Web site says, “This site offers resources for professionals working with MVS, OS/390, ISPF, REXX, and Assembler. Here you will find free software to download and most of them come with the source code. Also included on the site is my free MVS monitor software ‘MXI’, which is the result of over 8 years of effort.”

In fact, the site suggests that MXI hasn’t been updated since September 2004. In fact, the product was acquired by Rocket Software (www.rocketsoftware.com/) and is downloadable from www.rocketsoftware.com/portfolio/mxi/download.php. Information about the latest version is at www.rocketsoftware.com/portfolio/mxi/. The page says, “Rocket MXI G2 for z/OS is an ISPF-based application that enables the systems programmer to display important configuration information about the active MVS, OS/390 or z/OS system”.

Rob Scott’s site has a number of downloads available. There are utility programs such as VTOCUTIL, VARYDASD, CONFIGXX, DELNOENQ, DDDEFCHK, and DDDEFPTH. There are external REXX functions such as STEMPUSH and STEMPULL, LISTSYM, LISTMEM, and the very useful SLEEP. In the MISC section is IEFACTRT, a sample step termination exit that prints job summary messages at the top of the JES2 job log and I/O statistics for each DDname for each step.

Bill Lalonde’s Big Iron site is at http://billlalonde.tripod.com/. The site describes itself by saying, “This page is dedicated to S/390 mainframes and the MVS world”. Clicking on the “Stupid JCL tricks – The Ongoing Series!” takes you to “This Month's Topic”, which discusses searching HFS directories, and includes example JCL.

Clicking on, “The REXX page” takes you to a links page offering a number of different options, one of which is “sample code”. This takes you to a page offering a large number of REXX samples including: INTDATE, REXX, TERMINFO, READDIR, DI, DT, FINDJSAB, MVSVAR, RGNINFO, SYMDEF, ISEE, BOOKSEEK, URLINFO, WHOHAS, TIMEUP, ACFRES, XDSI, FINDJCT, LINKEXT, FINDNTTP, ADDREGN, EQUAL, SUBCOM, and OEMVAT.

Obviously, the IBM site has lots of software – www-03.ibm.com/servers/eserver/zseries/zos/downloads/ says, “you can find the following types of z/OS downloads on this page: as-is z/OS downloads; SMP/E installable z/OS Web deliverables”. Definitely worth a look, although you probably have already!

Finally, and I hope you won’t mind me mentioning it, the Xephon Web site at www.xephonusa.com has lots of code, some of which is freely available. Xephon has been publishing its Update journals since 1985 – the first issue of CICS Update came out in the December of that year. Since then thousands of Assembler macros, COBOL programs, REXX EXECs, bits of JavaScript, etc etc have been published (in all the Update publications) and are all on the Web site.