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IRS’ 60-Year-Old IT System Failed on Tax Day Due to New Hardware

nextgov.com

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Re: IRS’ 60-Year-Old IT System Failed on Tax Day Due to New Hardware

#181

Post by cptskippy »

danso wrote: post #126
cptskippy wrote: post #54

I feel like the authors of this article are being very misleading by using broader terms where they could be more specific, like using system where they could instead say software. The IRS isn't running 60 year old hardware, and the failure was in hardware that was just 18 months old. But because the IRS is running software that is 60 years old, the authors can claim the "system" dates back to the 1960s. It's also cl…

FWIW, the IRS.gov IT docs make reference to "Assembler Language" as if it were a proper noun: https://www.irs.gov/irm/part2/irm_02-005-003 > The scope of this directive is Servicewide. This includes software developed by contractors. Where the guidelines apply to Assembler Language, COBOL, C Language, C++ programming, and Java programming, these guidelines shall be followed respectively.

The two references in that document use it correctly, one is a document title and the other is contextual to a domain. The usage in the article is similar to saying "the foreign language" vs "foreign language". The former implies that there is only one where as the later does not.

Re: IRS’ 60-Year-Old IT System Failed on Tax Day Due to New Hardware

#182

Post by cptskippy »

chx wrote: post #91
cptskippy wrote: post #54

I feel like the authors of this article are being very misleading by using broader terms where they could be more specific, like using system where they could instead say software. The IRS isn't running 60 year old hardware, and the failure was in hardware that was just 18 months old. But because the IRS is running software that is 60 years old, the authors can claim the "system" dates back to the 1960s. It's also cl…

The oldest parts are not System 360, they run IBM 7074 assembly. Just FYI. The caching system is much newer, they have some Java proxy, there were posts about it the last year.

> they run IBM 7074 assembly

That potentially puts them in the late 50s. That might be some of the oldest running code in the world. That's pretty cool.

I wonder if the person who wrote it is still alive?

Re: IRS’ 60-Year-Old IT System Failed on Tax Day Due to New Hardware

#183

Post by cptskippy »

mankash666 wrote: post #90
cptskippy wrote: post #54

I feel like the authors of this article are being very misleading by using broader terms where they could be more specific, like using system where they could instead say software. The IRS isn't running 60 year old hardware, and the failure was in hardware that was just 18 months old. But because the IRS is running software that is 60 years old, the authors can claim the "system" dates back to the 1960s. It's also cl…

Feel free to not read articles written by non-tech people. Or, acknowledge the fact that a journalism major can only put in words what he understands of a deeply technical matter that's outside his expertise

Yes, and many places have technical editors that help with these sorts of things.

Re: IRS’ 60-Year-Old IT System Failed on Tax Day Due to New Hardware

#184

Post by DonaldFisk »

chx wrote: post #91
cptskippy wrote: post #54

I feel like the authors of this article are being very misleading by using broader terms where they could be more specific, like using system where they could instead say software. The IRS isn't running 60 year old hardware, and the failure was in hardware that was just 18 months old. But because the IRS is running software that is 60 years old, the authors can claim the "system" dates back to the 1960s. It's also cl…

The oldest parts are not System 360, they run IBM 7074 assembly. Just FYI. The caching system is much newer, they have some Java proxy, there were posts about it the last year.

The manual for the 7070, which was similar, is here: http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/7070/A22-7003-01_7070_Refer...

The instruction set documentation starts at page 42.

Re: IRS’ 60-Year-Old IT System Failed on Tax Day Due to New Hardware

#185

Post by cptskippy »

walrus01 wrote: post #74
cptskippy wrote: post #54

I feel like the authors of this article are being very misleading by using broader terms where they could be more specific, like using system where they could instead say software. The IRS isn't running 60 year old hardware, and the failure was in hardware that was just 18 months old. But because the IRS is running software that is 60 years old, the authors can claim the "system" dates back to the 1960s. It's also cl…

the z/whatever to host legacy mainframe applications is basically a bare metal platform, custom hypervisor OS, running system 360 VMs, right?

I'm not familiar with all of IBM's z offerings but it was my understanding that older systems were completely emulated and that there is no hardware compatibility. The emulation is completely independent of the underlying hardware platform and it allows them to retain ridiculous uptimes because of all of the hotswappable redundant systems that are able to run the systems concurrently.

Re: IRS’ 60-Year-Old IT System Failed on Tax Day Due to New Hardware

#186

Post by chx »

cptskippy wrote: post #182
chx wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The oldest parts are not System 360, they run IBM 7074 assembly. Just FYI. The caching system is much newer, they have some Java proxy, there were posts about it the last year.

> they run IBM 7074 assembly That potentially puts them in the late 50s. That might be some of the oldest running code in the world. That's pretty cool. I wonder if the person who wrote it is still alive?

https://archive.org/stream/irshistoricalfac00unit/irshistori... a bit broken up but it says clearly:

> January 1962 Automated data processing was officially put into operation in the IRS.

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/62dbfullar.pdf says

> --Dn September 19, 1961, less than a year following its establishment as a separate division, the Automatic Data Processing Division...

So the division was likely established in 1960. This https://books.google.ca/books?id=x1YESXanrgQC&pg=PA119&lpg=P... history corroborates by saying the treasury authorized the IRS to computerize fully in 1959.

They were 7074, we know that from http://blog.modernmechanix.com/big-brother-7074-is-watching-... Popular Science but also that some docs from 2016 says https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-utl/scap-pia.pdf

> SCAP downloads Corporate Files On-Line (CFOL) data from the IBM mainframe at the Enterprise Computing Center, Martinsburg. The CFOL data resides in a variety of formats (packed decimal, 7074, DB2, etc.).

> That might be some of the oldest running code in the world.

https://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/dpd50/dpd50_chro... says The IBM 9090 SABRE airline reservation system begins to be installed by American Airlines in 1961. That makes SABRE contemporaneous with the IRS Master Files or slightly older. I do not know, however, how much of that code is running today.

Re: IRS’ 60-Year-Old IT System Failed on Tax Day Due to New Hardware

#187

Post by raverbashing »

gowld wrote: post #152
DrScump wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, it's not just about "glory". If you work in "obsolete" languages/environments, you likely will be perceived as less valuable to your next employer.

I heard that COBOL programmers do pretty well because they are a rare commodity serving expensive industries.

If you're happy with working with something that destroys your brain and makes you useless to any other software technology developed in the last 20 years be my guest.

Re: IRS’ 60-Year-Old IT System Failed on Tax Day Due to New Hardware

#188

Post by jon1234 »

raverbashing wrote: post #34

The question for the industry remains: how do we deal with systems that should be up for 10 years? 25 yrs? 50 yrs? 100 yrs? We didn't even have computers as they exist today 50 years ago. How do we separate business logic in a self-contained way that can be independent of hardware and (from a certain level) software?

How can one trust the IRS such a non-trivial task, I mean basically allowed Scientology to become an actual religious institution.

Re: IRS’ 60-Year-Old IT System Failed on Tax Day Due to New Hardware

#189

Post by bartread »

romaniv wrote: post #137
raverbashing wrote: post #34

The question for the industry remains: how do we deal with systems that should be up for 10 years? 25 yrs? 50 yrs? 100 yrs? We didn't even have computers as they exist today 50 years ago. How do we separate business logic in a self-contained way that can be independent of hardware and (from a certain level) software?

>The question for the industry remains: how do we deal with systems that should be up for 10 years? 25 yrs? 50 yrs? 100 yrs? We didn't even have computers as they exist today 50 years ago. Is this a question the industry actually cares about? If anything, I'd say it got much worse at creating long-living software. It sucks to run a mainframe-based system from 50 years ago, but running a 10-year-old Web Forms applicat…

> The least maintainable systems I've worked with were the ones with the most sophisticated attempts at abstraction.

Seconded. Enterprise patterns mandating layers and layers of abstraction, making it incredibly hard to reason about the far flung pieces of code that actually do anything.

Re: IRS’ 60-Year-Old IT System Failed on Tax Day Due to New Hardware

#190

Post by BrandoElFollito »

What part is complicated when transitioning such a system?

Legacy data which must be transformed?

Old business logic which must be maintained? I do not know if there is a need to replay old rules vs. just kerping a snapshot

Continuity? Maybe there are so many transactions happening, linked to existing data that an interruption is complicated?

Risk of accessing old data which is better left undisturbed?

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