GUIDELINE
4618.05
Systems
Review Date
08/2002
1.0 SUBJECT: Vendor Guidelines for Application Development on DISC Computer Systems
2.0 DISTRIBUTION: All Current Users
3.0 FROM: Bruce Roberts, Director of DISC
4.0 PURPOSE: To present recommendations and standards for the development and use of applications in the DISC MVS and UNIX computer environments.
5.0 BACKGROUND: The DISC S/390 and UNIX data centers have available software and application products acquired over the years to meet the various application and agency needs. Many standards and guidelines have been developed to direct and guide the customer in the use of these products. Although a wide array of software is available on these systems and is supported by DISC Technical Support staff, only a subset of this software is recommended for new applications.
Also, an increasing amount of new application development on the DISC computer systems is being performed by vendors or consultants, most of whom are not familiar with our environment. This guideline will help familiarize vendors with the hardware and software environment in which they and the resulting applications they build must operate.
An agency or vendor planning a new application should follow these recommendations to ensure the highest level of support from both DISC and the system software products on which the application will be built.
6.0 RECOMMENDATIONS AND GUIDELINES
6.1 SYSTEM ENVIRONMENT
Division of Information Systems and Communications (DISC), supports a multi-machine computing environment and a statewide communications network. The DISC mainframe is an Amdahl GS2067A processor. This processor is equipped with Amdahl's Multiple Domain Facility (MDF) which allows the processors to be divided into logical systems within the physical processor. The GS2067A currently supports three (3) systems running OS/390 (formerly known as MVS/ESA), JES2, TCP/IP and VTAM. One system supports the processing needs of DISC, one system supports the processing needs for the Social Rehabilitation Services Department (SRS) and the remaining system is used by DISC Technical Support staff for installation and testing of new and upgraded software.
The three LPARS on the GS2067A share DASD and utilize Multi-Image-Manager (MIM) to manage concurrent dataset access. This complex also communicates to various other systems both within and outside of the state through the state SNA Network, the IBM Information Network, and the state TCP/IP Network (including access to the Internet).
The UNIX data center consists of several Sun Microsystems based systems, each dedicated to a particular application or agency. The base software on these platforms includes Sun's Solaris operating system, Veritas volume manager, and other ancillary software based on the needs of the application being supported.
6.2 GUIDELINES
The following discussion covers recommendations and guidelines of interest to an application developer. DISC maintains official documents such as Standards, Bulletins and Guidelines that are available to application developers that further define these recommendations. These official documents are available on-line or in hard copy form. Agency personnel are responsible for making these official documents available to their vendors and consultants.
6.2.1 Application Environments:
Recommended application environments on the mainframe are TSO, CICS (including NATURAL running under CICS), VTAM, TCP/IP, and UNIX Systems Services (USS) under OS/390.
6.2.2 Development Environments, Languages and Aids:
Recommended development environments are ROSCOE, LIBRARIAN and NATURAL on the OS/390 systems. These products are functionally complete and not overly resource intensive. In some cases, TSO can be used for development. Various software tools such as INSYNC, ISPF/VSAM, and CA-Intertest can be used to assist in data manipulation and program analysis. On the UNIX systems, VI is used for text editing. DISC also supports Emacs, a shareware text editor for those users preferring its functionality.
COBOL for OS/390 is the recommended development language on the mainframe. ASSEMBLER, PL1, and FORTRAN are available but not widely used. OS/VS COBOL is provided primarily as a run time environment for aged Cobol programs written according to the ANSI 74 standard. DISC does not support the OS/VS Cobol complier and does not recommend its use. Whenever possible OS/VS Cobol programs should be written using COBOL for OS/390. MicroFocul Cobol is available on the UNIX platforms for development. Sun's Workshop C and C++ compilers are also available for use.
Development aids include Intertest for interactive debugging in CICSk, Expediter for batch debugging, and Strobe for application profiling and performance tuning. In the UNIX environment, ADB is utilized for debugging binary/executables.
6.2.3 Database Environments:
Recommended database environments are DB2 and ADABAS under MVS, and Oracle on the UNIX platforms. These products are actively supported and include a number of monitoring and support utilities.
Utilities are also available to facilitate the design, tuning and editing of VSAM datasets. (VSUM, LISTCAT+, ISPFVU)
6.2.4 Security Packages:
Computer Associates' Top Secret is the only supported security package on the MVS systems. Developers are strongly encouraged to utilize Top Secret as their security mechanism when possible as opposed to building a separate mechanism into their applications. Many agencies have their own Top Secret administrators.
The UNIX environments utilize Computer Associates' UNICENTER package for signon security.
6.2.5 Print Services:
MVS print support is provided through three services. JES2 supports the data center local printers and remote printing via RJE and NJE.
CA-SPOOL (formerly ESF) is used to provide spooled printing to SNA and TCP/IP printers and supports a wide range of user and developer features. CA-SPOOL support is available from all major application environments including CICS, ROSCOE, TSO and NATURAL. CA-SPOOL should be used to provide low volume printing directly to users rather than printing at the central site and shipping the output to the users.
Print archival and report distribution services are made available through Sysout Archival/Retrieval (SAR), now called CA-View, and Report Management Option (RMO) packages. This software should be considered as an alternative to printed output for batch reports.
In order to reduce costs the central site is automating the operations environment. Part of the automation activity is to reduce the amount of paper printed on the local JES2 printers.
6.2.6 BATCH Scheduling:
OS/390 automated batch job scheduling is provided via the CA-JobTrac and CA-11 products. Use of these facilities is coordinated by the DISC Operations staff. Developers' new applications that require a complex or regular batch component should plan on utilizing automated scheduling and restart capabilities. Systems with long running critical batch operations should be scheduled with DISC Operations staff.
Automated job scheduling is performed on the UNIX platforms by the CA-UNICENTER product. In addition, a standard component of the UNIX operating system called CRON provides rudimentary job scheduling functionality.
6.2.7 Multi-session Support:
Software multi-session is provided on the DISC OS/390 system by the Candle Gateway/Supersession product. Multi-session approaches should only be considered when the hardware option is not available to the users or when other capabilities provided by the software solution such as simplifying complex user logons or multiple application menus are needed.
Another multi-session alternative is available for CICS applications, called CICS/Windows. This software will allow a single user session (and signon) to access multiple transactions and move between those transactions as though there were multiple terminals. For the CICS user this is ideal because it requires only one signon and represents only one VTAM session to CICS.
6.2.8 File Transfer Capabilities:
Netview Distribution Manager (NDM) by IBM is supported and recommended when performing file transfer between the OS/390 host and AS/400, System/36 or System 38 minicomputers, or another remote OS/390 or VM host, providing the file transfer software is available on those hosts.
PC file transfer products available are FTP (TSO, CICS), IND$FILE and Outbound (ASPG). The developer should select from among these products, based on protocols supported on the remote device.
When transferring files to foreign systems additional security can be accomplished by using MegaCryption and ASPG to encrypt files prior to the FTP. This software can also be used to decrypt encrypted files from foreign hosts
FTP is also available on the UNIX platforms. PKZIP is available on these platforms to compress and encrypt data being transferred via token ring and ethernet.
6.2.9 Electronic Mail:
Microsoft Outlook is the prevailing e-mail environment supported by DISC for the Department of Administration.
6.2.10 Resource Billing:
DISC recovers costs through usage billing for selected computing resources and environments. Agencies are billed for CPU utilization, DASD storage, Data Center print, and tape occupancy. DISC also bills for TCP/IP connections to KANWIN to connect with MVS and UNIX hosts.
6.2.11 Chargeback for the UNIX platforms includes billing the customer for the acquisition and administration of physical resources such as processors, disk and tape peripherals. Billing for Oracle is subscription-based rather than a measure of actual usage.
6.2.12 Other Software:
A complete list of software available on the DISC mainframe can be found in DISC
Guideline 4619, Systems Software in the DISC Computing Center.
6.3 Other Significant Standards and Guidelines
6.3.1 Availability of Hardware and Software:
DISC Standard 4407 contains the current availability schedule of hardware and software systems. Vendors should be aware of maintenance windows and times when development and production systems are unavailable.
6.3.2 Dataset and Job Names:
DISC Standard 4423 outlines standard 2 character agency/department abbreviations and their use in naming conventions for the DISC computer center. Jobs must follow this standard to avoid being held or purged by Operations. Dataset names must be adhered to in order to ensure proper billing. Dataset names are also used to control access by Top Secret and by the Storage Management software to control allocation of data sets.
6.3.3 Job Classes:
DISC Standard 4415 defines all currently supported job classes and must be followed in order to avoid jobs being cancelled due to exceeding job class limits such as cpu utilization or tape mounts.
6.3.4 CICS Services:
The CICS Services Guideline 4608 summarizes the DISC CICS environments, services and products available, and references procedures and standards for these services.
6.3.5 Terminals:
Host "terminal" access is available from the TCP/IP network using the TN3270 protocol.
6.3.6 Tape Management System:
Access to magnetic tapes (cartridge) is managed by the CA-1 Tape Management System.
Veritas NetBackup is utilized on certain UNIX platforms to manage tapes created in the backup process.
6.3.7 System Managed Storage:
Storage space on the MVS systems is controlled by DFSMS. Storage groups have been defined for short, medium and long term temporary data sets. There are also storage groups for permanent data sets, permanent data sets that are vaulted, and DB2 data sets. For complete details on the management criteria for these storage groups, see Standard 4460.
6.3.8 Documentation and Help:
Softcopy of all the DISC publications are available via VM. If you need help in accessing them, contact the DISC Multi Resource Library. If you can't print the document, a hardcopy is available at the DISC Library located on the 7th floor of the Landon State Office Building, phone number 785-296-6012.
On-line help for OS/390 and OS/390 subsystems messages and codes is available with MVS/Quick-Ref facility which can be accessed through ROSCOE and TSO.
On-line help is available on the UNIX platforms in the form of man-pages.
Interfacing with the Data Center through:
6.4 Suggestions for Improvements:
Suggestions for improving the usefulness of this guideline are welcomed and should be sent to the CONTACT PERSON below.
7.0 HISTORY: This Guideline was originally issued as 4618.00 dated 09/06/1991. It was re-issued 4618.01 dated 12/01/1992. Re-issued 4618/02 dated 03/15/1995. Re-issued 4618.02 dated 09/30/1997. Re-issued 4618.04 dated 07/15/2002.
8.0 CONTACT PERSON: Deputy Director, Bureau of Information Systems 785-296-3343