Unemployment applications are fairly small structured text records requiring some rather simple logic to process. I believe a single server built on a most powerful x86 CPU available today running an MS SQL Server instance (or Postrges perhaps, but I don't have experience with it) is more than enough to process all the unemployment applications on the whole fereakin planet. Why do they insist on using an ancient mainframe? That sounds fun but bizarrely irrational.
Mainframes Are Having a Moment
61–66 of 66 posts
Re: Mainframes Are Having a Moment
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are more surviving mainframe families than just IBM and Unisys: - Groupe Bull still supports GCOS mainframes (descended from General Electric GECOS) - NEC still supports ACOS mainframes (also descended from General Electric GECOS, but a different fork from Bull's) – only sold/used in Japan now, although in past decades NEC did attempt to sell them outside of Japan (not sure if anyone bought them though) - Fujit…
I notice that you repeatedly say "still supports". Do any of them still manufacture and sell those lines?
Fujitsu announced new GS21 mainframe models in 2018 [1]. (GS21 is partially IBM compatible at hardware and software level, mainly survives in Japan.)
And new BS2000 mainframe models in October 2019 [2]. (BS2000 is partially IBM compatible at instruction set level, but the OS is incompatible with any IBM OS; low end models are actually x86 servers running Linux with software emulation of the 390 instructions, while high end models have S/390-compatible CPUs.)
Atos (who own Groupe Bull) uploaded a brochure to their website in October last year [3] advertising their GCOS7/GCOS8 mainframes. The mainframes are actually Intel Xeon Windows servers running the legacy mainframe architecture under a software emulator. However, while in principle the software emulator could run on any Windows server, they only license it to run on their own hardware.
[1] https://www.fujitsu.com/global/about/resources/news/press-re...
[2] https://www.fujitsu.com/emeia/about/resources/news/press-rel...
[3] https://atos.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/BullSequana_M_BR...
Re: Mainframes Are Having a Moment
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
I notice that you repeatedly say "still supports". Do any of them still manufacture and sell those lines?
Fujitsu announced new GS21 mainframe models in 2018 [1]. (GS21 is partially IBM compatible at hardware and software level, mainly survives in Japan.) And new BS2000 mainframe models in October 2019 [2]. (BS2000 is partially IBM compatible at instruction set level, but the OS is incompatible with any IBM OS; low end models are actually x86 servers running Linux with software emulation of the 390 instructions, while hi…
It doesn't sound like any of that amounts to a still living architecture like the Z series with its own silicon still under active development. I wouldn't consider mere software emulation or an IBM compatible offshoot to represent an extant independent mainframe architecture.
Re: Mainframes Are Having a Moment
#64COBOL in 100 seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d7-etf-wNI
Re: Mainframes Are Having a Moment
#65I used to work at an environmental law firm in downtown Manhattan and accounting and other core financial systems were running on a VAX OpenVMS mainframe, and the document creation and storage was on PCs over a Token Ring, Banyan VINES network. The DOD was using VINES at the time. Memories of playing DOOM in 1994 downloaded from an FTP server somewhere while working the night shift to make backups on huge tape cartri…
Link to the cloud scene:
Re: Mainframes Are Having a Moment
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
COBOL is unstructured. It doesn't even have functions. When you've got some million+ line tangled mass that has all kinds of undocumented behavior, it's really better just to add more duct tape and punt it off to the poor bastard who actually has to fix it in 20 years.
Since 1985 that COBOL can be structured, and since 2002 object oriented as well, with the latest ISO update being done in 2014 Besides compiling to native code, there are compilers that target JVM and CLR as well.
True, but no one is using OO Cobol, since it's all ancient legacy stuff.