4 ms·

I’m not a COBOL dev but I work with mainframes(z/OS). Most COBOL applications I’ve seen have been banking and insurance related with few exceptions. Most of the

I’m not a COBOL dev but I work with mainframes(z/OS). Most COBOL applications I’ve seen have been banking and insurance related with few exceptions. Most of them either run as a series of batch jobs or via transaction managers like IMS and CICS. Backends are usually sequential files(we call them datasets),DB2,VSAM(Virtual Storage Access Method) or DL/1(hierarchical DB that’s part of IMS). Quite a few places I’ve seen have run IBM MQ as well. If changes are made to these systems it’s often due to changes in regulation or driven by changes in the business(new financial products being offered etc. Off-topic: I’ve seen quite a few mainframe related posts on HN fly by over the years. I’ve been meaning to create an account and participate but I’ve only gotten around to it just now.

jacktheturtle 1y ago
nice, welcome to the party
- zeeframe 1y ago
  Thank you!
nstj 1y ago
Thanks for your insight - it’s comments like this which make HN a place worth visiting every day. And welcome!
znpy 1y ago
Dumb question: mainframes and z/OS look interesting, how does one get started with learning about those systems and those environments ?
- zeeframe 1y ago
  Not a dumb question at all! In Europe I’ve seen a few training programs held by companies looking to get new talent in to learn from the older techs. Browse around and see if any companies around you have something like that. There are some free resources available that will allow you to get training but I haven’t tried them myself. IBM Z Xplore is worth a look as an example: https://www.ibm.com/products/z/resources/zxplore https://www.ibm.com/products/z/resources/zxplore I hope you find a way in, more mainframe developers and sysadmins(often called systemsprogrammers in the mainframe niche) are always needed. Edit*: Spelling and grammar
  - jmbwell 1y ago
    I’ve run through a bunch of ZXplore and it’s more fun than I expected. They have it hooked in to VS Code now. It’s weirdly modern. And you get to play on a real z machine. Recommendable summer/holiday tinkering project. It’s amazing how much and yet how little has changed in computing and transaction processing.
- schlauerfox 1y ago
  I'm not a mainframe programmer, but coming from x86 land I was very curious. I really learned a lot from the IBM Coursera "Intro to Mainframe" since none of my experience really applied it was tough. It had a real shell account to practice with though. https://www.coursera.org/professional-certificates/ibm-z-mainframe https://www.coursera.org/professional-certificates/ibm-z-mai... Also the MOSHIX mainframe YouTube channel has a lot of info, and helped me setup HERCULES emulator for my own little mainframe experience. http://www.hercules-390.org/ http://www.hercules-390.org/
- mindcrime 1y ago
  There's an emulator called Hercules[1] that lets you run (some) mainframe stuff on a PC. There are limits to what you can run on it though, mostly due to licensing issues with IBM. You can also look at the IBM Redbooks site[2]. Search for terms like Z/OS, MVS, CICS, DB/2, etc. and you'll find a lot of IBM books, whitepapers (well, they call them redpapers, but whatever) and so on. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules_(emulator) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules_(emulator) [2]: https://www.redbooks.ibm.com/ https://www.redbooks.ibm.com/
  - whistl034 1y ago
    I've setup Hercules on my Mac before. Fun tool, since I last touched OS2/MVS 40 years ago. Best part is many of the old OS's (MVT, MVS, vm/370) are all still available since IBM never saw the need to copyright them.
- asymmetric 1y ago
  This is a good article on the subject: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/07/the-ibm-mainframe-how-it-runs-and-why-it-survives/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/07/the-i...
- joshuapowell 1y ago
  Great question. I work in the mainframe division of a Fortune 100 company. The suggestions above are great if you're interested in learning about the technologies used on z/OS. A vote for zeeframe's recommendation of the IBM Z Xplore course. Great stuff. If you're looking for more reading material, I'd suggest the O'Reilly book "Modern Mainframe Development" book that covers a range of topics. (https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/modern-mainframe-development/9781098107017/ https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/modern-mainframe-d...) If you're looking for an on-the-job training approach that would enable a career change into the mainframe, Broadcom offers something called the Vitality program (https://mainframe.broadcom.com/beyondcode/vitality_program https://mainframe.broadcom.com/beyondcode/vitality_program) that runs every year in North America, Europe, and Australia. It's a program that would equip you with serious credentials that could help you land one of those System Programmer jobs or similar.
gosub100 1y ago
What is the primary computational task for insurance? Is it computing actuarial tables? Or accounting for the premiums/claims? Or something else? I can excuse banking for not switching off of COBOL but I fail to see how insurance uses it to any significant degree.
- sethhochberg 1y ago
  Some less-common varieties of life insurance start to look a whole lot like investment products and are (sometimes controversially) sold as such for people in very specific financial situations - think like cash value and death benefit value that vary over time based on asset performance. A legacy insurer selling Variable Universal Life or similar policies would have some financial calculation needs.
  - janstice 1y ago
    And I guess if there’s a whole-of-life policy sold in 1962 that hasn’t been terminated - I guess there’s a lot of grandfathered rules that are just easier to keep in their original systems.
- kqr 1y ago
  Accounting is a huge part of it. Sometimes claims are not fully resolved for decades, and the books for that policy hypothetically have to be kept open for as long. This must be kept correct, but is not computationally heavy. Computing total exposures and possible loss distributions are things which can be more computationally heavy. It includes grouping together similar policies which is multiplicative in complexity.
- jonathanlydall 1y ago
  I can’t remark on COBOL, but I did contracting for a time to non-US insurance company replacing their Universe Basic system originally written in the mid 90s, with a .NET Core (3.1 had just come out at the time, around 2019) based system. The system contained records of all their policies including all the premium factors (e.g. make, model, year of car, parking location, physical address, etc). These premium factors were then fed into a rating engine which would use actuarial tables with custom actuarial defined algorithms to determine premiums. In insurance companies, working out the correct premium is core to everything. Insurance companies can have lots of different products and their competitive edge comes from how well they structure their offerings and determine the correct premiums based on risk factors. One does not simply rewrite such a thing. Couple of things I thought were a bit interesting about the place: - Their single server running Universe Basic (with a hot spare I believe) had 4TB of RAM. - While I was used to the devs being the stars of the show at the consulting house I worked at, at insurance companies it’s the actuaries.
TacticalCoder 1y ago
> Most COBOL applications I’ve seen have been banking and insurance related with few exceptions. Banking is a big one yup. I think some countries still use COBOL too for computation related to pension payments. Best paid consultant I ever met was a COBOL dinosaur. The bank fired him then had to crawl at his feet and accept his insane daily fees when he came back as a consultant. A very good friend of mine worked at a bank on Java code that would generate... COBOL code. Fun stuff.
lstroud 1y ago
It would be kinda cool if you’d create a CICS Hacker News UI. ;)
cedws 1y ago
Do you think there’s any money in helping businesses modernise their stack as a consultant?
ralphc 1y ago
What, if any, advantages that VSAM, IMS or DL/1 have over the SQL databases we're more familiar with here?

jacktheturtle 1y ago

nice, welcome to the party

zeeframe 1y ago
Thank you!

nstj 1y ago

Thanks for your insight - it’s comments like this which make HN a place worth visiting every day. And welcome!

znpy 1y ago

Dumb question: mainframes and z/OS look interesting, how does one get started with learning about those systems and those environments ?

zeeframe 1y ago
Not a dumb question at all! In Europe I’ve seen a few training programs held by companies looking to get new talent in to learn from the older techs. Browse around and see if any companies around you have something like that. There are some free resources available that will allow you to get training but I haven’t tried them myself. IBM Z Xplore is worth a look as an example: https://www.ibm.com/products/z/resources/zxplore https://www.ibm.com/products/z/resources/zxplore I hope you find a way in, more mainframe developers and sysadmins(often called systemsprogrammers in the mainframe niche) are always needed. Edit*: Spelling and grammar
- jmbwell 1y ago
  I’ve run through a bunch of ZXplore and it’s more fun than I expected. They have it hooked in to VS Code now. It’s weirdly modern. And you get to play on a real z machine. Recommendable summer/holiday tinkering project. It’s amazing how much and yet how little has changed in computing and transaction processing.
schlauerfox 1y ago
I'm not a mainframe programmer, but coming from x86 land I was very curious. I really learned a lot from the IBM Coursera "Intro to Mainframe" since none of my experience really applied it was tough. It had a real shell account to practice with though. https://www.coursera.org/professional-certificates/ibm-z-mainframe https://www.coursera.org/professional-certificates/ibm-z-mai... Also the MOSHIX mainframe YouTube channel has a lot of info, and helped me setup HERCULES emulator for my own little mainframe experience. http://www.hercules-390.org/ http://www.hercules-390.org/
mindcrime 1y ago
There's an emulator called Hercules[1] that lets you run (some) mainframe stuff on a PC. There are limits to what you can run on it though, mostly due to licensing issues with IBM. You can also look at the IBM Redbooks site[2]. Search for terms like Z/OS, MVS, CICS, DB/2, etc. and you'll find a lot of IBM books, whitepapers (well, they call them redpapers, but whatever) and so on. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules_(emulator) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules_(emulator) [2]: https://www.redbooks.ibm.com/ https://www.redbooks.ibm.com/
- whistl034 1y ago
  I've setup Hercules on my Mac before. Fun tool, since I last touched OS2/MVS 40 years ago. Best part is many of the old OS's (MVT, MVS, vm/370) are all still available since IBM never saw the need to copyright them.
asymmetric 1y ago
This is a good article on the subject: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/07/the-ibm-mainframe-how-it-runs-and-why-it-survives/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/07/the-i...
joshuapowell 1y ago
Great question. I work in the mainframe division of a Fortune 100 company. The suggestions above are great if you're interested in learning about the technologies used on z/OS. A vote for zeeframe's recommendation of the IBM Z Xplore course. Great stuff. If you're looking for more reading material, I'd suggest the O'Reilly book "Modern Mainframe Development" book that covers a range of topics. (https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/modern-mainframe-development/9781098107017/ https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/modern-mainframe-d...) If you're looking for an on-the-job training approach that would enable a career change into the mainframe, Broadcom offers something called the Vitality program (https://mainframe.broadcom.com/beyondcode/vitality_program https://mainframe.broadcom.com/beyondcode/vitality_program) that runs every year in North America, Europe, and Australia. It's a program that would equip you with serious credentials that could help you land one of those System Programmer jobs or similar.

gosub100 1y ago

What is the primary computational task for insurance? Is it computing actuarial tables? Or accounting for the premiums/claims? Or something else? I can excuse banking for not switching off of COBOL but I fail to see how insurance uses it to any significant degree.

sethhochberg 1y ago
Some less-common varieties of life insurance start to look a whole lot like investment products and are (sometimes controversially) sold as such for people in very specific financial situations - think like cash value and death benefit value that vary over time based on asset performance. A legacy insurer selling Variable Universal Life or similar policies would have some financial calculation needs.
- janstice 1y ago
  And I guess if there’s a whole-of-life policy sold in 1962 that hasn’t been terminated - I guess there’s a lot of grandfathered rules that are just easier to keep in their original systems.
kqr 1y ago
Accounting is a huge part of it. Sometimes claims are not fully resolved for decades, and the books for that policy hypothetically have to be kept open for as long. This must be kept correct, but is not computationally heavy. Computing total exposures and possible loss distributions are things which can be more computationally heavy. It includes grouping together similar policies which is multiplicative in complexity.
jonathanlydall 1y ago
I can’t remark on COBOL, but I did contracting for a time to non-US insurance company replacing their Universe Basic system originally written in the mid 90s, with a .NET Core (3.1 had just come out at the time, around 2019) based system. The system contained records of all their policies including all the premium factors (e.g. make, model, year of car, parking location, physical address, etc). These premium factors were then fed into a rating engine which would use actuarial tables with custom actuarial defined algorithms to determine premiums. In insurance companies, working out the correct premium is core to everything. Insurance companies can have lots of different products and their competitive edge comes from how well they structure their offerings and determine the correct premiums based on risk factors. One does not simply rewrite such a thing. Couple of things I thought were a bit interesting about the place: - Their single server running Universe Basic (with a hot spare I believe) had 4TB of RAM. - While I was used to the devs being the stars of the show at the consulting house I worked at, at insurance companies it’s the actuaries.

TacticalCoder 1y ago

> Most COBOL applications I’ve seen have been banking and insurance related with few exceptions. Banking is a big one yup. I think some countries still use COBOL too for computation related to pension payments. Best paid consultant I ever met was a COBOL dinosaur. The bank fired him then had to crawl at his feet and accept his insane daily fees when he came back as a consultant. A very good friend of mine worked at a bank on Java code that would generate... COBOL code. Fun stuff.

lstroud 1y ago

It would be kinda cool if you’d create a CICS Hacker News UI. ;)

cedws 1y ago

Do you think there’s any money in helping businesses modernise their stack as a consultant?

ralphc 1y ago

What, if any, advantages that VSAM, IMS or DL/1 have over the SQL databases we're more familiar with here?