Re: [open-cobol-list] What do you think of JCL ?

[Wim Niemans]

I do have a very different view on the use of JCL.
To my opinion JCL was necessary in those days due to the vast number of 
removable media and scarce resources, like memory or even the operator's 
typewriter.
With JCL one defined the operational environment and let the OS make them 
available before the program can take off.
Than that unit, called a job, was issued to the OS. The JCL of such job was 
merely intended to let let operate the datacentre in a smooth way (nowadays 
there is cloud).

Later on came spooling (obsoleting the printer being available at run time), 
memory swapping (no scarce resources anymore), removable properties became 
obsolete by large disks and mass storage, the console is totally obsolete by 
the shell, and so on.
So for this specific property of JCL there is no use any more. If you don't 
agree, try to define the availability of a specific USB stick in your 
alternative.

Some manufacturers extended JCL with workflow of a Job. This is harder to 
obsolete, but still possible if you can eliminate the need of removable media.



Cheers,
Wim Niemans ri


Op 19 sep. 2013, om 18:24 heeft Patrick het volgende geschreven:

> Thanks for the feedback everyone
> 
> If JCL is designed to solve problems we don't have on the desktop, then 
> let me reverse that question.
> 
> Would a Guile, Tcl, lua Open Cobol binding solve problems on the 
> mainframes normally tackled by JCL and provide an alternative to JCL?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 09/19/2013 12:06 PM, Brian Tiffin wrote:
>> Patrick; Michael;
>> 
>> Take a look at Fossil SCM by Richard Hipp.  A subset of Tcl (TH1) is
>> built into the bug tracking feature and for top and bottom banner
>> control of the CGI interface.  Pretty cool.
>> 
>> Oh, I'l ditto Vince as well.  Go with shell and cron and skip JCL on
>> the GNU/Linux side.  Or for playing with JCL, (a thing to know, even
>> if it's just "yeah I've seen JCL"), take a look at
>> http://my.opera.com/btiffin/blog/2012/02/27/hercules-os-360-mvt-and-cobol-circa-1972
>> for instructions on a Hercules MVT setup that you can play with.
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> Brian
>> 
>> On 9/19/13, Patrick <address@hidden> wrote:
>>> Hi Mike
>>> 
>>> "I like your enthusiasm, never loose that!"
>>> 
>>> I won't ! , I promise.
>>> 
>>> I love Tcl. Basically my favourites are Cobol, Tcl and Ada.
>>> 
>>> Have you looked at jim tcl ?
>>> 
>>> It's really small.
>>> 
>>> This is probably just some more "crack smokin" but I have been day
>>> dreaming about rewriting jim in pure COBOL. Tcl in native cobol would be
>>> neat.
>>> 
>>> I have printed all of the source of jim in color and I am also studying
>>> tcl parsers written in tcl to lower the bar to entry.
>>> 
>>> Thanks
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On 09/19/2013 10:53 AM, Michael Anderson wrote:
>>>> Patrick,
>>>> 
>>>> Although I agree with Vince, I like your enthusiasm, never loose that!
>>>> 
>>>> As of lately (the last 5 years), I've been doing migration work,
>>>> migrating HP3000 applications to Windows, Linux and HPUX (Unix). Like
>>>> IBM, HP, specifically the HP3000 has it's own version of JCL.
>>>> 
>>>> Many of the programmers I work with jump right into converting the JCL
>>>> to some local scripting language. On windows it would be BAT files or
>>>> Power-hell, on Linux its bash scripts, on HPUX its ksh scripts, and so
>>>> on......
>>>> 
>>>> Much of the JCL originated from batch the processing days, then the
>>>> OLTP machines made it more interactive, and on HP MPE/iX platforms it
>>>> grew into a very advanced scripting language. So, for me (to emulate
>>>> the JCL environment) the replacement for Batch/JCL is Tcl. For a
>>>> minute I thought about using NodeJS instead of Tcl. In the end I
>>>> choose Tcl, mostly because I can call "TclEval" directly from Cobol, or
>>>> C.
>>>> 
>>>> Converting all JCL to Tcl makes more sense, because the exact same Tcl
>>>> syntax can be used on any of the most popular platforms, including
>>>> Windows, Mac, and all flavours of Unix.
>>>> 
>>>> Now with GNU being my platform of choice, and becoming more aligned
>>>> with the Richard Stallman philosophy, I ponder, should I trade Tcl,
>>>> for Guile?
>>>> 
>>>> --
>>>> Mike.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On 09/19/2013 08:13 AM, Chris Geldenhuis wrote:
>>>>> On 09/19/2013 02:17 PM, Vincent Coen wrote:
>>>>>> On Wednesday 18 Sep 2013 22:03:06 Patrick wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> After reading one today, it sounds like people invented the scripting
>>>>>>> language I was considering long ago, job control language.
>>>>>>> This sounds like it should be the easiest language to implement, is
>>>>>>> it
>>>>>>> really inconsistent and weird? How could something so simple have
>>>>>>> gone
>>>>>>> wrong.
>>>>>>> Would JCL or something like it be good for open Cobol ?
>>>>>> JCL is exactly that a Job control system for executing/starting jobs
>>>>>> on a m/f (mainframe) it links any resources needed by a specific
>>>>>> program or group of programs, e.g., files and their access type,
>>>>>> printers etc.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Yes, some of the commands in it are inconsistent but that is more
>>>>>> the fact that various programmers have coded the new stuff without
>>>>>> sticking to some standards in format etc.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Under Linux such a process is NOT required as it is all dealt with
>>>>>> inside the existing tools of Linux.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> There is no need for it and more importantly the old saying
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> "If it is not broken don't fix it"
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> comes seriously to mind.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> It is a wasted exercise.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Vince
>>>>>> 
>>>>> +1
>>>>> 
>>>>> ChrisG
>>>>>> 
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>>>>>> 
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>>>>> 
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