I've always felt it was a bad idea to have installation mainframe
documentation too far separated from the mainframe platform itself or
dependent on any other server platforms, under the general premise that
in a DR situation if we have recovered the mainframe we want to be sure
we have access to all documentation needed to operate it.
Some documentation was just kept as monocase or dualcase text files on
MVS, with links from ISPF screens. Before DCF/Script became too
expensive, some large documents were maintained as separate chapters in
DCF SGML using DCF to build text and pdf versions of the document.
Afterwards those SGML documents were converted to use docbook tools with
docbook document source on MVS, building multi-html, single-html, and
pdf version with free tools on a workstation and then porting various
forms either back to MVS or to media that went off site for DR.
Because of the complexity of the docbook approach, there has been
pressure in recent years to go to a more update-friendly wysiwyg
solution, with a management preference for MS Word. My own preference
is OpenOffice. The OO price is right, enabling everyone to afford the
current version, while non-trivial licensing costs with MS Word
typically mean there are multiple, not-completely-compatible versions
floating around the corporation. My version of OpenOffice has much
better support than my version of MS Word for maintaining documents of
several hundred pages as a master document and separate chapters and
optionally generating both html and pdf document formats, which can be
saved on MVS and elsewhere. I also find a much lower level of
astonishment using OpenOffice - it seems like MS Word more often tries
to do too much and makes erroneous assumptions about my formatting
intentions. And then of course there is the philosophical issue of
having MVS documentation dependent on MicroSoft!
I am not averse to the concept of a wiki and I believe we actually have
one that is available to Technical Services and used by PC Technical
Support, but to not violate my requirement for availability of MVS
documentation, some form of the information would have to be portable
both to MVS and in some other form (html, pdf) that would be accessible
without any functioning server in a DR scenario. There would also have
to be some support to take a collection of separate related articles and
assemble them into a hard copy manual, such as might be required by
Operations to restart the computer center after a complete power down
when no servers are available.
Joel C Ewing
On 12/04/2010 07:30 AM, John McKown wrote:
I am curious about something. It is not directly about IBM z series, but
about those of us, older, people who support them. It is more a
philosophy question than technical.
I want to document our system. We do have some documentation. At
present, it is all is a mish-mash of various MS Word documents. I really
don't care much for it. And I'll admit one reason is that I dislike Word
Processors in general and MS Word in particular. Anyway, I have access
to a Windows server system. On it, I installed a nice little package
called UniServer.
http://www.uniformserver.com/
<quote>
The Uniform Server is a WAMP package that allows you to run a server on
any MS Windows OS based computer. It is small and mobile to download or
move around and can also be used or setup as a production/live server.
Developers also use The Uniform Server to test their applications made
with either PHP, MySQL, Perl, or the Apache HTTPd Server.
</quote>
On top of this I installed a very simple Wiki: http://www.pmwiki.org/
I have written a fair number of hyperlinked "articles" about our system
using this. Granted, it is a bit of a bother to have to type stuff in.
But no worse than typing in any other system. I've tried to include
links to vendor support sites and how we use the product. For products
which I've installed, I've included installation and customization
information.
Now the "problem". Nobody else will even consider using this for their
documentation. They have said that it is just too different from MS Word
and even though they like what __I've__ done with the links, it is "just
too much trouble" to learn to do documentation in a different way. And,
anyway, MS Word is universal whereas Wikis are not. So learning to
maintain a Wiki article is not marketable.
Am I insane to want to use a Wiki for this sort of thing __instead__ of
a Word processor?
I'm not even going into other software I use. Such as vym (View Your
Mind) which I used to document the IPL and which made a very nice
graphic image for the Wiki. This image shows the IPL sequence and
CA-OPS/MVS processing which results in everything coming up without the
need to enter a lot of z/OS console commands. Again, others think the
graph is nice and very useful. But don't want to learn how to make one
themselves. OK, I can understand this latter because vym is a Linux
application. And nobody else likes or uses a Linux desktop.<sigh>
Yes, I will have some cheese with that whine.
--
Joel C. Ewing, Fort Smith, AR [email protected]
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