I have 12 years of mainframe experience...

Maybe I should have mentioned that my 12 years are not with IBM machines, but with Unisys...

it look like iam the only begginer here . because i have only 1 year an half

Hi Kim,

I'm new to this mainframe world with 14 months of experience in TOPSECRET and RACF .. Long way to go !!!!

Regards,

Madhu

Congratulations, Rakesh. Just curious, do you call yourself a CICS (pronounced kicks) programmer or a CICS (pronounced see eye see ess) programmer? I know we could have a whole separate discussion about that!

Hi Kim,

     I'm 25 years in mainframe most in CICS using LU 6.2 communication protocol, a lot of pseudo conversational BMS program, VSAM access and DB2, but the most exciting project, was one that I decided to try to put the browser accessing the mainframe via the DOCUMENT interface, and another one, was one that I develop 10 years ago, to access CICS transactions via Batch programs.

     And I like very much to use CEDX to debug programs, don't you like?

     Forgive for my mistakes, but I'm Portuguese, and I don't know a lot of English Grammar.

     And here in PortugaL we say "see cs" instead of "Kics"

A few months over the 24 years mark.... not long now for the quarter century milestone...

Total, 27 years.  Wrote first Fortran program on cards.  Started sending 'IM' messages from VM as "TELL" shortly thereafter and Emails as "NOTE".

I've been a DB2 DBA for 11 years now.

still, other DBAs make fun of me just because I never knew what it was like to work without the DATE data type. :-)

I started in 1968 on a 360/20 - 8k main memory, 4 tape drives, card punch and card reader.  Those were the days. I have worked as a systems programmer, programmer, DBA, and now doing security evaluations.

hi Kim,

i start working on a system IBM 3090 in the 1990 ... therefore they are nearly 20 years

No, i don't use Linux ... my name is Lino ... and some friends call me Linux .. so i use this nickname

bye

Hai kmoutsos,

I am having 3 Years of experience on mainframes.I am working in India in Syntel company.

What abt u? how much exp do u have?

Hi There,

I have 31 years in the mainframe industry - as a customer and IBM'er...started on a 370/145 running DOS R34 and then onto OS/VS1 R5 and finally to MVS 3.8 in the early 80's.  Storage and Storage Management are what I'm doing now.

Scott

Hi Kim,

If you ignore the three years ICL at school in the 70s my IBM Mainframe experience started in 1989 May. COBOL/DB2 then APS (Now called Microfocus AMB) along with C/370 and REXX, CLIST JCL ISPF Dialog and of course CICS. In fact I have just finished my first sockets listener for CICS and written the Windows code to talk to it so there is life in the mainframe yet.

I thought this was interesting because the average age in our office is over 40 and the biggest risk to keeping things on the mainframe seems to be the complete lack of investment in training young people in how to use them.

Regards

Pete

I've been working on the MF since 1980 - which means 29 years.   I started coding ISPF dialog, then CICS SYSTEMS programming,  in the old macro level assembler days, anyone remember those TCT tables which took 3 hours to assemble ?    in the last 12 years I've picked up MQSeries and DB2

Done pretty much everything in between too - To work on the MF at a system level you must know everything (network, OS, application support, coding, JCL, utils, debugging, CICS, MQ, database, interfaces, etc. etc.)                     

I see people now work at the help desk a year, 1 years later they are desktop, two years later Windows Admins that make similiar bucks as the ole  MF sys progs.

These people are clueless    (hate to say it but it's true  -  reboot)      

I'm working on mainframes since more than 30 years in Germany and Switzerland. Last year we founded a new company called "European Mainframe Academy" to educate new mainframers.

Wolfram

But you have to admit mainframers are fun!

Hey I am on here too!!!

Joe (ponygt65)

Had my first mainframe experience in 1973 so I'm looking at roughly 25 years. Some of those were hybird years working with mulitple platforms: mainframe, mid-range and PCs. There were also a few gaps.

As I noted there were periods of time when I didn't deal with mainframes so I can't count the whole time from 1973.

Hi Everyone,

I was reading this forum and surprised to see there are mainframe expert who is having 40+ year  and it nice to know about that.

I am from India working with HSBC Pune as software developer in mainframe.

Well answer to question is I am having only 4 year of experience in mainframe development ,mainly working on cobol,db2,jcl,cics,vsam.

How would like to know about future of mainframe technology ?

Hi Kim -

I have been working on the 'enterprise server' platforms continuously since 1974, so that makes it 35 years.  My experience with IMS has been almost that long.  I have been inthe database management area for 25 years, Supporting IMS and DB2.  The shop where I work is still developing applications using IMS.    They run their z-box flat out and regularly push it to 100% utilization,so I am constantly working on tuning database applications and managing the environment to get everything out of it.

I ti is good to see all the responses here.   I plan to keep myself in good health as I expect there will be a lot of demand for my experience in 10 years and young talent is not there.

Hi,

I have  2 years of experience in mainframe. I am looking for ESP Report generation process here as we migrated from CA7 schdeuler to ESP.

All I want to generate a report using the ESP tool in the following fomat of

List of jobs restarted successfully List of jobs force completed List of jobs cancelled

While we were using CA7, we used to have SARBTCH program for extracting all these informations.

But after migrating to ESP, we are much conused about report generations.

Please help me as I have more enthusiasm to do things differently.

Thanks a lot in advance

Hi,

I've over 15 years of experience with the IBM mainframe technology.

Kim,

With the all the new technology IBM has been incorporating into the Mainframe environment, everyday feels like a kid learning something new!!  Some of the old CICS (C-I-C-S) programs exposed as web services surprise many web developers with their performance!

Hello Kim,

I'm too young, I'm afread ... I wrote my first PL/1 Program in 1971 on IBM S/370-145 ...

Until 2005 (when our firm migrate to UNIX) I had the honour to program on IBM 4341, 3090, 9672 G5, 2064 ...

They may excuse me, if I forgot some ...

Now I'm very annoying, that I can't try a z10 with the famous 4.4 GHz quad core CPU!

Sincerely yours,

emil

Well...define "experience". I started using an IBM System/360 (a 75 and a 44, plus a 370/158) in about 1973. I started being paid for it in 1980.

Faculty brat, hacking at various job entry systems and then VM/370 on a University system. Learned to program by reverse-engineering a game.

This was starting around middle school; I sat in on my dad's programming class the summer after 8th grade, which was a Big Deal back then -- got me a heck of a leg up. Started first programming job January 2, 1980.

Those were the days...!

Hi,

I am new to mainframe and has no experience on it, as of now I support san / storage and looking forward to be an mainframe storage admin.

I am here to get some guidence on how / where can I get that skillset and then job.

Not sure if I am at the right place... please do let me know.

Thanks
Ganesh

1.5 years

24 Years

Hi, this is xboy he has 23 years of mainframe.

Hi Kim,

After finishing my college I took Mainframe system admin training for 4 months then I got placed in IBM . I'm currently working in IBM.

I didn't had any idea about mainframe before I joined the training course , Movie Die hard 4.0 was also one of the reasons for me  to get

interest in Mainframe ....

Regards,

Madhu

Thanks Kim , I'm still a Kid right, long long way to go !!! Lot of hacking stuffs in the movie!! Really love those screens with green lines running !!!!

15 Years, IBM 360/30, IBM 4330, DAS-3, Honeywell 8000, CDC 600, does anyone remember punch cards and the IBM 129?

I started working on mainframes in 1979.

First as an operator on LCBIPS (Burroughs - Large Commercial Item Processing System).

The company shortly after switch to IBM's CPCS (Check Processing Control System).

I transitioned to programming after taking college courses in Assembler Language and Cobol).

I programmed in BAL/360/370/390 for nearly 15 years before moving on to CICS/DB2 programming.

I now work on Mainframes as an Implementation Engineer performing installation and configuration of my company's software.

I also work on various flavors of UNIX including USS, AIX, Solaris and Linux. And of course, Windows.

Mainframes rock!

Ray Gayton

San Diego, CA

My first foray into the swinging swirling world of mainframe processing was as an 079 card sorter operator in 1969 while I was going to college. I was promoted to operator on a 360/40 system. I had that job for about a year. In 1980, I entered the field more permanently, coding assembler, COBOL, DL1, CICS on a 370/168 machine running 128 MB of main memory and 10 partitions. Back then, partitions were so small, we had to use phases to fold programs like Origami to fit! Progressed up through 4300's, 390's and now out of programming, but still involved with our z9 and z10 boxes here. It's still fun!

(Kim - do forgive me as this is not strictly speaking on topic but I thought somebody reading this thread might be interested.)

I have just found a photocopied copy of CICS Application Programmer's Reference Manual (Macro Level) - known to its (not many) friends as CICS APRM(ML). It's dated July 1987, and the form number is SC33-0079-5. I'm happy to post it book post to anybody who would find it useful (I'm sure there's still a lot of macro-level CICS code around, although I haven't seen any since about about 1986.)  Please only reply if you have a genuine use for it.