That's a good point I suppose, but I think he's just worried about being able to move his production system to a hardware platform so that he can convert to something a bit more recent without bending over backwards and doing back flips.
The session at SHARE that I will be presenting this year covers those types of conversions (Long-Jump) which are conversions beyond the 3-release "rule". I think converting from 1.6 to 1.10 (or 11 or 12) certainly falls under that. I was wondering if (during the session) it would be beneficial if I should mention the hardware aspects (and pitfalls) that sites run into instead of just the software side. It was more common a few years ago when 967x and multiprise sites "couldn't" move beyond (1.1 (or 1.4 for the multiprise)), and the IBM "rule-book" said they couldn't install it on a z/9 in preparation for moving to the "current" release. Now with z/10 and z/196 the wheel turns yet again and many sites will find themselves in the same boat they were in with the 967x's and Multiprise boxes, only worse because it will be a self-imposed boat built with "vague restrictions" and not fact. That's good for us consultants, but bad for IBM's image. I can understand making the mistake the first time with s/360's or the second time with s/370, and maybe even a third time with the 43xx boxes or even one last time the next time with the 967x and Multiprise boxes, but now we have a whole group of z/series boxes that I can already see are going to be in an artificial and virtual world of hurt. The sad part is that much of it is not even a "real" hurt because the terms "not supported" and "won't work" have entirely different meanings and a lot of people, (not just at IBM) seem to not understand the difference. The "real" world is that I just finished (in October) converting a university from OS/390 2.9 to z/OS 1.11 and moved them from their MP3000-H70 to a (new) z/10 and it took less than 3 months from start to finish, and most of that was in planning and testing. The most experienced systems programmer on site there had 2 years of experience. They didn't even know about the "3 release rule" so the conversion went off without a hitch. Maybe we should rename my session to z/OS conversion FUD-Buster, what do you think? Brian ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
