If the mainframe won't cooperate, you'll have work to do no matter what. But you can isolate that work into as little as possible. That is what the Unix tools d

If the mainframe won't cooperate, you'll have work to do no matter what. But you can isolate that work into as little as possible. That is what the Unix tools do. Everything is a service, if you make it so. A component is a service, offering the functionality of its interface. The 'wc' tool is a service--its interface is its command-line switches. And you're right, when everything is a service, everything is easy (I'd say easier).