John, I did that with a software product I previously authored. The Internet enabling product has an HTTP client interface that I used to "tweet" as a demo. Calls can be made from the product's REXX interface so you could "tweet" from batch jobsteps or use an API to make requests from program code. So, it has been done!
Originally Twitter allowed the use of the HTTP authorization request header so you could pass a base64 encoded user and password. That was fairly easy to do via HTTP requests. Now Twitter requires authorization using the OAUTH protocol which is much more involved from the client request side. We found the easiest thing to do for the oauth requirement was write a web service running off platform, and use the product's web service client interface to invoke the web service from z/OS instead of trying to do the oauth directly from z/OS. It was an interesting facility because any number of people, worldwide, can follow a single Twitter user and be notified about whatever topics you want to publish to them. Chuck Arney Arney Computer Systems -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of McKown, John Sent: Friday, March 09, 2012 10:30 AM To: [email protected] Subject: A stupid idea? Using "twitter" like service for z/SO, et al., event notification. I'll admit that my mind is not running quite right today. But something that is bouncing around is notification of events happening on "servers", especially z/OS. Would it be helpful, or stupid, to set up a "twitter" type, secured, server. Then have the appropriate people from work, who have smartphones or even PCs, be able to "follow" specific topics, which may be things such as individual server names, or "z/OS product job status", or "abended jobs". Or are some companies doing something similar using SMS? We use SMS messages via CA-Unicenter for monitoring CA-Unicenter "tickets" assigned to our group. But we cannot individually decide if we would like more. And we don't generate tickets for things like "production job .... completed successfully on 2012-03-10 at 13:58" or "Event ... has not completed successfully yet." On weekends, we are totally "dark" and the on-call Production Support person must periodically logon to z/OS in order to check statuses. I thought it might! be easier if they got "tweets" about things. Of course, for all I know, this may be impossible due to software patents. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
