New IDMS/SQL Site Under
Preparation at http://idmssql.webs.com/
Watch Out ....by
October 2009
IDMS_Database_Design.pdf
IDMS Database Design Rel 15.0 Manual
IDMS_COBOL_DML_Reference.pdf
IDMS COBOL DML Reference 15.0 Manual
IDMS
Database Admin Vol 1 IDMS Database
Administration Reference Manual Vol I UPLOADED 5th October 2009
IDMS
Database Admin Vol 2 IDMS Database
Administration Reference Manual Vol II
ADS
Reference Vol 1 ADS/Online Reference Manual
Vol I
ADS
Reference Vol 2 ADS/Online Reference Manual
Vol II
ADS
Alive ADS Alive (Debugging of ADS)
ADS
Users Guide ADS/Online Users Guide
Mapping
Facility IDMS Mapping Facility
IDD
Reference IDD (Datadictionary Online)
Reference
DMLO
Guide DMLO Users Guide
Old
Car vs An Incomplete Car! Aug20, 2009
Java has been
dominating the application market at least for
the last 10 years. From applet to Servlet and
then to JSP and EJB, it has been a remarkable
journey for Java which was originally meant for
devices (embedded language?). ...But recently one
reads that EJB has become out of fashion! A book
says "J2EE orthodoxy makes heavy
work of many simple problems.Many—probably
most—J2EE applications are over-engineered,
with unnecessarily complex architectures.
Over-engineering can be very costly. J2EE
developers tend to assume that increased cost up
front will be more than balanced by reductions in
future costs. Unfortunately, karma doesn’t
apply to software engineering, and this is often
a fallacy. Greater complexity up front means more
code to write and maintain, more potential for
bugs, more delay in demonstrating functionality
to users: ultimately, greater chance of failure,
and at greater cost.
J2EE over-engineering usually involves EJB. As I
pointed out in Expert One-on-One J2EE Design and
Development, EJB is often used inappropriately.
This is a real problem, because EJB can introduce
more complexity than it conceals. Some services
provided by EJB are also overrated. Critiques of
EJB have become commonplace since late
2002.Despite the significant problems that have
emerged with EJB, it continues to be adopted too
often largely
because of fashion and fear!! It goes on like
this!!!"
How could this have
happened? What was proposed as an easy and highly
productive technology is suddenly not so! Though
it is typical of current softwares to blame the
immeditely preceding ones and claim 'we solve all
those now', this criticism of EJB goes far beyond
that! Several advocated features like Entity
Beans, CMP (Container Managed Presistence) etc
never worked it seems. And there is what they NOW
call "impedance mismatch" between Java
and Relational Databases (another failed
panacea!)
IDMS/SQL feels that the
industry has been fooled. We have been guided by
Modern Ptolemys! We were forced to believe that
the Earth is flat!
An old application made
using IDMS and ADS in the mid eighties, obviously
cannot be expected to have all the features of a
web application of today. However, the old 3270
application was a complete
application. It can
be compared to a car of the eighties. It was a
complete car with the fittings and engine
features available then. No ABS breaks, no
coalition cushions, no navigation screen, no DVD,
but still a complete car, some of which are still
running today. In comparison, the modern systems
made using Java and related technology are like
incomplete vehicles! They have DVD and
navigation, but some basic features of a car
might be missing- seat belt or seat itself
missing? Engine gets heated fast etc. Forgot
coolant? The "impedance mismatch" they
are talking about is due to the inability of
relational databases to represent real objects!
To overcome this, now, Sun has come up with
Persistence API in Java! Companies have come up
with middle-layer products for ORM (Object
relational Mapping- adding one more layer to the
complexity) - Hibernate for example. In this
scenario, one will be wondering who really is in
charge of the COMMIT/SYNCPOINT/ROLLBACK of the
databases ( Persistence if we use the modern
terminology) - Application Server or Database
Server ?? This sort of "incomplete
vehicles" are abundant in today's software
marketplace. So new vendors are always in the
forefront trying to fix the holes and claiming to
have the most modern vehicle!
If the language and key
products are like this, then what about the tools
around them? They are not different either! Each
tool / framework claim to solve the problems
created by the previous ones (or shortcmings of
the previous ones), at the same time provide
support or 'plug-in' for the old framework/tool
and many others. For me, it is like (if) Toyota
claims that their new car Avensis does have
support for a little of VW, Ford and plug-ins
available for many others. Yet again, as in the
case above, what we get is an incomplete car!!!
Made complete only when you add another car or
cars!
We will have the very
alst issue of IDMS/SQL coming out in October
covering these topics! This will be last issue
from Geocities Site!!
Geocities
Closing - Deporable decision from Yahoo! (May
2009)
Yahoo informs
that "We have decided to discontinue
the process of allowing new customers to sign up
for GeoCities accounts as we focus on helping our
customers explore and build new relationships
online in other ways. We will be closing
GeoCities later this year."
This is bad news for all
free home pages. Geocities was the very first
site to offer a free space of 2 MB very early in
the history of internet. Geocities offered
free email address even earlier than hotmail.
GeoCities began in mid-1995 as BHI, which stood
for "Beverly Hills Internet", a small
Web hosting and development company in Southern
California. On December 15, 1995, BHI became
known as GeoCities offering home pages located at
virtual 'cities' named after real cities! In
January 1999, Yahoo purchased Geocities. Though
Yahoo retained the existing features, they failed
to convert Geocities into something of a
matchwinner. The domain oocities.com
attracted at least 177 million visitors annually
by 2008 according to a study.
It's all too familiar in the industry when the
big companies become greedy and try to do
something stupid. There are several examples from
IBM OS/2 to Arzoo.com from hotmail founder Sabeer
Bhatia.
Though free home pages, geocities was
recognized by Google and many Geocities pages
appeared on the Google search on the first page
itself. IDMS/SQL itself is an example.
This being the case, Yahoo's decision to close
Geocities is unfortunate, unfair and deplorable.
Here is Yahoo's statement.
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/geocities/geocities-05.html
We hope Yahoo
will reverse the decision. Alternative
arrangements will be made to keep the archives of
IDMS/SQL News.
SQL Session Example
A Sample SQL Session
in IDMS/SQL One last time!
Optimization in IDMS/SQL A
look at the Access Plan!
SOA Hype The
biggest circus in the industry today (after CASE
flop and traditional client-server failures)
The Virtual
Cullinet Site
Re-Inventing the Wheel
When CA took over Cullinet in 1989, it was
predicted that by 1995 mainframe as well as IDMS
would be obsolete. CA too never expected IDMS to
stay alive for another 10 years. Doomsday
predictions were there everywhere.
"Death" of the product was reported
several times in Computerworld, even IDMS/SQL
already commented on this. If all these were
true, we won't be even writing this note.
IDMS surivived Y2K, client-server Unix dbs and
now even the Web applications. After Y2K sometime
in 2003, the IT market was heading towards
Offshore - typically offshore to India. Bangalore
figured even in a Nobel Debate (1998).
IDMS support is no longer there from most CA
offices. Clients are dormant or pretend to be
dormant. Many applciations were classified for
replacement "in the next 3 years"!
Though such decisions were taken by many as early
as 1999 or 1994 or 2001, the fact is that the
client is saying the same thing now in 2007 -
within the next 3 years we will replace IDMS!
This had severe impact on the people who were
'experts' on the product. Many left the field for
new technologies like Java or .net or Unix
databases. This has created a vacuum at many
sites - no one knows the product. THe impact is
severe at sites where the application has grown,
though the management refuses to admit it! There
are sites where the 'free space' in a Giga DB
became close to 1% (Guidelines for an active db
is 30%!)
 Indian sites have come up utilizing
this 'vacuum'. Mainframe itself, though NOT unknown
to India during the 70s and early 80s, was no
longer a topic in the University curriculm in the
last 20 years. Gone are the days when M.Tech
Computer Science students were carrying books
like 'Systems Programming by JJ Donovan' or
'Operating Systems by Madnick and Donovan' or
IBM's own Principles of Operation (known as POP
).. One doesn't need a S/370 to learn about
computers. That's the reality.
This being the case, one gets a surprise when
IDMS/ADS Online issues are actively discussed in
an internet based forum...emulating the old Tech
support of Cullinet or CA! Are we seeing a TSIS
like support system here?
Appearances are misleading though! A quick
browse through the issues will reveal that most
are novices and everyone is trying to re-inevnt
the wheel in the most complicated way! This is
not to discredit the guys in the form or the
offshore guys who are doing a wonderful job when
the vendor and the industry are missing the
point! The problem is that real expertise is
missing or coming in bits and pieces... More
to follow
Ex CA Chief Sanjay Kumar sentenced to 12
years in prison
Sanjay Kumar, the former CEO of Computer
Associates, was sentenced to 12 years in prison
for his role in a $2.2 billion accounting fraud
at the software company. Mr. Kumar, who is
scheduled to begin serving a 12-year prison term
this month, will actually pay about $52 million
over the next two years, the majority of his and
his family’s assets. Most of the remaining
restitution will probably never be paid, although
when Mr. Kumar leaves prison the government will
have the right to garnish 20 percent of his
wages.
For readers of IDMS/SQL News in Scandinavia
this is a time to recapture some unpleasant
events which happened in CA Norway during 1998,
approximately the same time Mr Kumar & Co
were involved in huge financial scandal at CA
headquarters in New York. One of the longterm
employees of CA Norway was unceremoniously fired
and was forced into a legal case with CA. The
employee did not have the financial strength to
wage such a battle with expensive lawyers and
against a multi billion dollar company. The
employee approached Charles Wang in Islandia, who
did take interest in the case and deputed Mr
Kumar to deal with the issue. The head of CA's
European operations did meet the employee in Rome
in 1998, but the meeting produced no concrete
results. One Mrs C'lin in CA Islandia was talking
to the employee on behalf of Mr Kumar until the
last date prior to the court proceedings in Oslo.
Mr Kumar had the power to stop this case and
do a settlement, but he did not move. Now after
less than a decade, the man who could have
ensured justice in Oslo, who had the sole power
to do so, who could have made justice available
in Oslo with a phonecall, whose name was
misleadingly and erroneously used in Oslo, has
met with his destiny in New York. IDMS/SQL is
pleased to say 'JUSTICE WAS
DONE'!
More on this Mr
Kumar to pay huge damages and serve 12 years
IDMSDC - 177 days non-stop - crosses 200
million transactions
Since we reported the story below the IDMS
region had to be taken down becuase of MVS IPL.
But now that startup has beaten own record. The
latest figures from 19th Sept 2006.
CURRENT TIME 14:31:34.04
CURRENT DATE 06/262 < --------
STARTUP TIME 04:08:39.82
STARTUP DATE 06/085 < ---------
Current max tasks 65
Times at max tasks 744
Allocated DCE/TCE 65
Number of tasks abended 11579
Number of tasks processed 201391746 <------
Number of tasks active 23
On the other hand, now it is the age of third
class systems. No one bothers about these. Not
even the vendor! So if you want to keep up with
the market, better start learning Java and
Weblogic, or even better Ruby, AJAX, PHP and some
'xyz' database which you can download from the
net!
Java for S/370
Guys
After a long break, this
'course' has been updated. We will put all the
samples on the net shortly. This will be followed
by a critical study of Java usage in real
business (JSP, Servlet, IDE (Eclipse, Visual
J++...), Application Servers ( Tomcat, Weblogic,
Websphere..) etc)
Cover
Page N E W - June 2005
Introduction.ppt
Chapter1.ppt
Chapter2.ppt
FileIO.ppt
N E W -
June 2005
gui.ppt N E W - June 2005
Special.ppt
N E W -
June 2005
IDMS Release 16 and Two Phase
Commit
A Webcast was there on 12th Jan
2005. Judy Dillman presented the Features and
Judy Kruntorad, Orrin Stevens and Bill Abbott
were present. About 50 particpated from around
the world.
IDMS
16.0 Webcast snapshot
|
person to
access this page since 1 Feb 1998 
