5 ms·

This barcode is normally used as input to ACP (IBM Airline Control Program, also called TPF or z/TPF) in plaintext to a TCP/IP TN3270-based terminal emulator ru

This barcode is normally used as input to ACP (IBM Airline Control Program, also called TPF or z/TPF) in plaintext to a TCP/IP TN3270-based terminal emulator running under Windows (with or without any SSH encryption). But the barcode text is visible to anyone facing the terminal. At least it's how it happened in all my latest flights.

mschuster91 11y ago
> IBM Airline Control Program, or ACP, was an operating system developed by IBM beginning about 1965. > TPF evolved from the Airlines Control Program (ACP), a free package developed in the mid-1960s by IBM in association with major North American and European airlines. In 1979, IBM introduced TPF as a replacement for ACP — and as a priced software product. Holy fuck. I don't want to be the poor guy maintaining code that is likely to be older than himself...
- badloginagain 11y ago
  The job security + paycheck might be justified though. Almost guaranteed small team too.
  - vxNsr 11y ago
    Yeah, I know someone who had a consulting job for some obscure IBM mainframe "thing" and she basically got to do whatever she wanted with an amazing salary because she was one of 3 people in the world who knew anything about it.
    - yitchelle 11y ago
      That is really "niche", but I wonder how transferable her skills are? in case those IBM mainframes becomes obsolete :-)
      - BillinghamJ 11y ago
        They're already very obsolete. Doesn't mean the support contracts will go away though!
      - dagw 11y ago
        There's very good money in being one the very few people in the world whom are really good at "obsolete" things.
  - vinodkd 11y ago
    TPF, if you're one of the 3-4k people worldwide who still know it, pays very well. Yes, they will be small teams, but in the largest travel companies. Disclaimer: I could be wrong about the number above, but afaik its in the ballpark.
- badloginagain 11y ago
  The job security + paycheck might be justified though. Almost guaranteed small team too.
- Maxious 11y ago
  IBM IMS (Information Management System, predating DB2) failed for some large banks in Australia over the weekend. http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/business-it/st-george-bank-of-melbourne-and-banksa-outage-to-be-fixed-on-monday-night-st-george-says-20151005-gk1u3z.html http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/business-it/st-george-bank-of-m... "IBM designed the IMS with Rockwell and Caterpillar starting in 1966 for the Apollo program" "Vern Watts was IMS's chief architect for many years. Watts joined IBM in 1956 and worked at IBM's Silicon Valley development labs until his death on April 4, 2009. He had continuously worked on IMS since the 1960s." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Information_Management_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Information_Management_Sys...
  - mseebach 11y ago
    > "IBM designed the IMS with Rockwell and Caterpillar starting in 1966 for the Apollo program" I've come across IMS before, and I absolutely love this line. This is a database built for the Apollo program by a tractor company. That's a kind of old-school solidity we don't see much anymore (mostly for the better, but still).
  - andyjohnson0 11y ago
    Vern Watts was the first IBM Distinguished Engineer, and was responsible for some of the technologies that went into DB2 and other SQL databases. Some info about his career at [1] and [2]. [1] http://www.scaledb.com/vern.php http://www.scaledb.com/vern.php [2] http://vcwatts.org/ http://vcwatts.org/
- nnd 11y ago
  Sadly, that's the reality of most of the travel tech. Lots of legacy software using proprietary protocols running on IBM mainframes.
  - ghaff 11y ago
    Some of this old software is indeed very creaky. Look at all the problems associated with merging the Continental and United systems. (Which, from my understanding, still aren't 100% resolved.) However, this old software also needs to touch a huge number of other systems. You're not going to rewrite it in Go using a microservices architecture over a few months.
    - nnd 11y ago
      True, that's why standardization in this area is very important. I'm very optimistic about IATA standards like NDC currently being adopted.
- raarts 11y ago
  I worked with ACP/TPF in the distant past. All programs were written in S/370 macro assembler. My department tested C, but it was dismissed as too slow, generating code that was too inefficient. But if you are maintaining this software now, you're definitely not poor. Also, I probably wouldn't mind doing that now, it certainly wasn't the worst code I ever encountered, by far.
MichaelGG 11y ago
Makes me wonder what'd happen by fuzzing it. It's probably all fixed length, but the data is probably assumed safe and not escaped. Though I suppose getting access to a system to figure this out would be the hard step.
- userbinator 11y ago
  If it's truly handled as fixed-length then there won't be any need for escaping; that's only a concern when values are embedded into other delimited strings, like SQL. A lot of these systems definitely predate SQL. Even with SQL, using parameters is the usual way to operate on large amounts of data with fixed queries, and it avoids escaping issues entirely.
  - MichaelGG 11y ago
    I mean escaping as in "the scanned data's FF number is then sent to a shell shell script for crediting the flight". And since it's expected that the data is just 8 alphanumeric chars, it doesn't handle anything else well. You're right there's ways to do this properly, of course. But in practise, with huge systems, people end up hooking in things here and there and forget at some point eh?

mschuster91 11y ago

> IBM Airline Control Program, or ACP, was an operating system developed by IBM beginning about 1965. > TPF evolved from the Airlines Control Program (ACP), a free package developed in the mid-1960s by IBM in association with major North American and European airlines. In 1979, IBM introduced TPF as a replacement for ACP — and as a priced software product. Holy fuck. I don't want to be the poor guy maintaining code that is likely to be older than himself...

badloginagain 11y ago
The job security + paycheck might be justified though. Almost guaranteed small team too.
- vxNsr 11y ago
  Yeah, I know someone who had a consulting job for some obscure IBM mainframe "thing" and she basically got to do whatever she wanted with an amazing salary because she was one of 3 people in the world who knew anything about it.
  - yitchelle 11y ago
    That is really "niche", but I wonder how transferable her skills are? in case those IBM mainframes becomes obsolete :-)
    - BillinghamJ 11y ago
      They're already very obsolete. Doesn't mean the support contracts will go away though!
    - dagw 11y ago
      There's very good money in being one the very few people in the world whom are really good at "obsolete" things.
- vinodkd 11y ago
  TPF, if you're one of the 3-4k people worldwide who still know it, pays very well. Yes, they will be small teams, but in the largest travel companies. Disclaimer: I could be wrong about the number above, but afaik its in the ballpark.
badloginagain 11y ago
The job security + paycheck might be justified though. Almost guaranteed small team too.
Maxious 11y ago
IBM IMS (Information Management System, predating DB2) failed for some large banks in Australia over the weekend. http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/business-it/st-george-bank-of-melbourne-and-banksa-outage-to-be-fixed-on-monday-night-st-george-says-20151005-gk1u3z.html http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/business-it/st-george-bank-of-m... "IBM designed the IMS with Rockwell and Caterpillar starting in 1966 for the Apollo program" "Vern Watts was IMS's chief architect for many years. Watts joined IBM in 1956 and worked at IBM's Silicon Valley development labs until his death on April 4, 2009. He had continuously worked on IMS since the 1960s." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Information_Management_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Information_Management_Sys...
- mseebach 11y ago
  > "IBM designed the IMS with Rockwell and Caterpillar starting in 1966 for the Apollo program" I've come across IMS before, and I absolutely love this line. This is a database built for the Apollo program by a tractor company. That's a kind of old-school solidity we don't see much anymore (mostly for the better, but still).
- andyjohnson0 11y ago
  Vern Watts was the first IBM Distinguished Engineer, and was responsible for some of the technologies that went into DB2 and other SQL databases. Some info about his career at [1] and [2]. [1] http://www.scaledb.com/vern.php http://www.scaledb.com/vern.php [2] http://vcwatts.org/ http://vcwatts.org/
nnd 11y ago
Sadly, that's the reality of most of the travel tech. Lots of legacy software using proprietary protocols running on IBM mainframes.
- ghaff 11y ago
  Some of this old software is indeed very creaky. Look at all the problems associated with merging the Continental and United systems. (Which, from my understanding, still aren't 100% resolved.) However, this old software also needs to touch a huge number of other systems. You're not going to rewrite it in Go using a microservices architecture over a few months.
  - nnd 11y ago
    True, that's why standardization in this area is very important. I'm very optimistic about IATA standards like NDC currently being adopted.
raarts 11y ago
I worked with ACP/TPF in the distant past. All programs were written in S/370 macro assembler. My department tested C, but it was dismissed as too slow, generating code that was too inefficient. But if you are maintaining this software now, you're definitely not poor. Also, I probably wouldn't mind doing that now, it certainly wasn't the worst code I ever encountered, by far.

MichaelGG 11y ago

Makes me wonder what'd happen by fuzzing it. It's probably all fixed length, but the data is probably assumed safe and not escaped. Though I suppose getting access to a system to figure this out would be the hard step.

userbinator 11y ago
If it's truly handled as fixed-length then there won't be any need for escaping; that's only a concern when values are embedded into other delimited strings, like SQL. A lot of these systems definitely predate SQL. Even with SQL, using parameters is the usual way to operate on large amounts of data with fixed queries, and it avoids escaping issues entirely.
- MichaelGG 11y ago
  I mean escaping as in "the scanned data's FF number is then sent to a shell shell script for crediting the flight". And since it's expected that the data is just 8 alphanumeric chars, it doesn't handle anything else well. You're right there's ways to do this properly, of course. But in practise, with huge systems, people end up hooking in things here and there and forget at some point eh?