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Murach's OS/390 and z/OS JCL
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Author: Raul Menendez, Doug Lowe, Mike Murach
List Price: $62.50
Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price
ISBN: 1890774146
Publisher: Mike Murach & Associates (March, 2002)
Edition: Paperback
Sales Rank: 91,099
Average Customer Rating: 5 out of 5
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Customer ReviewsRating: 5 out of 5
A great way to learn about mainframe systems
Several years ago, i had to deal with a mainframe system. My attitude
then was to minimize my exposure as much as possible, as if it were a
disease. I figured that mainframes were obsolete and any time i spent
learning about them would be time wasted. Well, they are still around,
and i recently found myself having to advise some mainframe
testers. Mainframes are still around. It was time for me to learn more
about them.I picked up Murach's OS/390 and z/OS JCL, and it does an excellent job
of describing the architecture and nomenclature of mainframe
systems. It presumes that you nothing about mainframe systems. To get
started, you should know that MVS, OS/390 and z/OS are all basically
interchangeable terms for the mainframe operating system (quibbling
over these terms would be like quibbling over whether Linux were a
Unix operating system). JCL is "job control language" and is the
original front end for mainframe systems when punch cards were their
primary external interface. There are now a number of easier
interfaces that allow you submit JCL to a mainframe. Anyhow, this book has been a very valuable guide to me for
understanding the basics of mainframe systems and giving me the
information i need in order to analogies between it and other systems
that i know better. For example, i now know that a data set is kind of
like a file, a directory, or a filesystem, depending on how you look
at it. And i have some sense of what CICS and VSAM are. I was also surprised to see such a modern book format on a topic that
i'm prone to consider dated. It's a large format with the text running
on the left hand pages and examples, diagrams and summaries on the
right. The main ideas of each spread are covered three times: in the
narrative on the left, and in the examples and summary ("description")
on the right. On many pages, i found myself not turning the page until
i understood the material before me. It's a great format, and on the
strength of it alone, i've already picked up Murach's book on Java for
my technical library.
Rating: 5 out of 5
A highly recommended and reliable tutorial
Collaboratively written by experienced professional programmers Raul Menendez and Doug Lowe, Murach's OS/390 And z/OS JCL is a comprehensive, and exhaustive tutorial, reference, in the form and formate of a complete and effective guide to understanding the JCL used to run programs on an IBM system. From the basics of JCL operating system code, to writing code in JCL yourself, to mastering time-saving features, tape data sets, and much more, Murach's OS/390 And z/OS JCL is a thorough, step-by-step book that guides anyone with even the most cursory experience in operating systems down the most effortless path. Sample programs and meticulously presented ideas help clarify the solid computer science foundation of this essential, core reference for anyone who needs to concern themselves with the ins and outs of JCL. Murach's OS/390 And z/OS JCL is a highly recommended and reliable tutorial that will aptly serve the user as a continuing reference work.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Very practical and useful
I got more than I expected from "OS/390 and z/OS JCL". Not only were the chapters on JCL itself very clear and complete, but this was really a collection of small reference books. For example, there is a section on IDCAMS, which is going to be very useful, because it has all those parameters that I can never remember. There's another section on batch utilities, which shows you how to use them with HFS directories.I would very much recommend this book to anyone new to z/OS -- or anyone like myself who gets annoyed at how difficult it is to find out some detail that they have just forgotten.
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