Amen Abe. I agree with Abe. I also consulted for a number of yea John, Amen Abe. I agree with Abe. I also consulted for a number of years and had to come in behind people who did the quick and dirty and I had to do the cleanup. It wasnt a pretty sight, made me money so I didnt complain. But I am the kind of guy I dont want someone looking my my projecty/code etc and say how sloppy it was. Not this person. In consulting, especially my name was my money.....I have worked DR tests =and we had all the Z/OS documentation in MS/Word format on CD and
manuals if we required them. It worked very well. The key in organization and planning. Scott J Ford ________________________________ From: Abe F. Kornelis <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sat, December 4, 2010 10:08:32 AM Subject: Re: Philosophy: curiousity question John, there are many roads that lead to Rome. Wikis are quite nice. On my last project we had a multi-tier application. The Unix folks had their doco in their own wiki. We zOS folks had our stuff in simple Word documents and spreadsheets. Which is the better solution I don't know, though I know very well where my personal preference goes. But that's mainly a matter of familiarity. One question comes to mind, though. How does your management look upon documenation? Does your company have any standards? Are they enforced? Are products and/or changes allowed to go to prod *without* required doco changes? I guess it's the usual story. It makes me feel sad. There's never time to create or maintain decent documentation - and when someone needs to apply maintenance mgt complains it takes too much time. Hey - what do you expect? Would you buy a car that has no manual, no maintenance directions, no nothing? So it's too cumbersome and too expensive and then some mgr decides its 'much better' to replace the system with (whatever). The return on investment is a hopeless issue; expect the new system to suffer from the same problems. Engineers and scientists make mistakes, which can be costly. But at least we learn from our mistakes. It's time managers start doing the same. Managers should be held responsible for their decisions. Even after they leave to another department. I've seen to many of them hopping around so often, they never get to see the actual results of their own decisions. And boards let them get away with it. Its incredible. Well, that's it, I guess. Don't let it spoil your weekend. Cheers, Abe. === ----- Original Message ----- From: "John McKown" <[email protected]> Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main To: <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, December 04, 2010 2:30 PM Subject: Philosophy: curiousity question > 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. > > -- John McKown > Maranatha! <>< > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > 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 > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
