What are the different areas in mainframe

[venkateshk]

I'm completely new to mainframe environment. Someone please tell me what are the different areas in mainframes. What exactly i should learn?

[Robert Sample]

Broadly speaking, the main areas for mainframe jobs are applications development, systems support, operations support, and maintenance (sometimes considered part of development). What you should learn depends very heavily upon which area you want to work in; skills useful for applications development, for example, are almost unused in operations support and vice versa. Since the mainframe platform is over 40 years old, there is a broad and very well developed set of skills for each area. While education in basic techniques is important, you also must recognize that every site has its own set of tools, purchased usually many years ago, and learning a particular tool set will qualify you for some jobs and disqualify you for others. You will also find that there tends to be more rigor in mainframe methods than on other platforms -- many, if not most, sites have strict guidelines on testing and promotion of programs from test to quality assurance to production status, for example.

[venkateshk]

Thank you Mr.Robert. Could you please suggest me which tool is best to learn at present in mainframes environment.

[Robert Sample]

If you are interested in applications development, languages commonly used include COBOL, PL/I, Java, Assembler, sometimes FORTRAN, ALGOL, and APL -- to name a few. You would also need to learn JCL, VSAM, at least one or two databases (DB2, IDMS, IMS, etc) and possibly much more.

If you are interested in systems support, SMP/E is absolutely critical to understand. IPCS and Assembler are both very handy.

If you are interested in operations support, the specific tools depend much more on the site -- CA-7, ZEKE, CONTROL M are all used for scheduling.

If you are interested in maintenance, studying JCL, VSAM, database, COBOL, PL/I, Java, Assembler would all be good.

Let me strongly reiterate: there is no one tool to learn for mainframe systems. Unlike Windows where Office is king, there are an incredible variety of tools available and different sites use different tools so I cannot tell you what to study. If you can learn which tools are most commonly used at sites where you want to work, you can focus on them.

[venkateshk]

Thank you Mr. Robert.