IBM introduces new powerful mainframe computer

Hi Friends,

As u know mainframe god is IBM, who have invented mainframe computer, continuous there invention in the same field & now they have introduced new powerful mainframe computer. 
              IBM said its zEnterprise EC12 mainframe server is designed to help clients securely and quickly sift through massive amounts of data, meeting the demands of retail and other clients in the age of "Big Data." Running at 5.5 GHz, IBM said the microprocessor that powers the mainframe is the fastest chip in the world. Processing speed is 25 percent faster than the previous model.
Mainframes are used by corporate clients ranging from banks to chain stores. IBM says the new model could be used by retailers to manage online transactions and analyze clients' buying habits and then use the information to create a "more customized shopping experience," such as a custom coupon issued during a transaction.
          "Whether its retail or whether its transportation, making reservations, whatever it is, the system has been built really to help clients do those new types of new-age transactions," said Doug Brown, an IBM vice president of marketing.
         IBM says more than $1 billion was spent on research and development for the system at 18 sites worldwide, with most of it in Poughkeepsie, about 40 miles north of its headquarters in Armonk in Westchester County.
         The new mainframe is being promoted as one of the most secure systems ever with a tamper-resistant cryptographic co-processor to provide privacy for sensitive transactions.
           IBM has been focusing on its software and services divisions, which are more profitable than selling the mainframe computers that made the company famous decades ago. But the sales of those mainframes help feed demand for IBM services.

Programming languages used in mainframe

Hello friends

    In this post i will discuss the various programming languages that are used for programing mainframe

                        A computer language is the way that a human communicates with a computer. It is needed because a computer works only with its machine language (bits and bytes). This is slow and cumbersome for humans to use. Therefore, we write programs in a computer language, which then gets converted into machine language for the computer to process.
             Mainframes started off with a single language but the number you can now find on big iron has exploded, and the division that used to exist between mainframe languages and those found on other platforms has almost vanished. So which languages are mainly used on a mainframe today, and why might you choose one over the other?

The various used languages are - -

• Assembler
• COBOL
• PL/I
• C/C++
• Java
• CLIST
• REXX™

                     The most fundamental language is assembler, and you can still find assembler programs written over 50 years ago running on modern mainframes. It allows the programmer to address the hardware directly and so is hardware-dependent. This makes it fast, but hard to use and to debug, although IBM's high-level assembler HLASM does remove some of the development pain as it allows you to code using features more commonly found in high-level languages.
 Fortran is the granddaddy. Mainly used for scientific applications, it was developed by IBM in the 1950s, has been in continual use and development ever since, and remains a primary language for intensive supercomputing tasks. It is relatively easy to write an entirely portable program in Fortran, although outside of the scientific community it can be hard to find people with significant levels of Fortran programming experience. The latest version is Fortran 2008.
            Released shortly after Fortran, COBOL is more oriented towards business programming; the name is a contraction of COmmon Business-Oriented Language. Its strength is in data processing and its readability. This makes it hard to hide malicious COBOL code, and errors easier to spot. COBOL runs on every mainframe platform as well many smaller systems, and research firm Gartner reported in 1997 that 80 percent of the world's business ran on COBOL, with over 200 billion lines of code in existence and that an estimated five billion lines of new code are being added annually. As a result, COBOL skills are widespread and still quite easily found. Updated in 2002 to include support for object-orientation, critics say the language is over-verbose, but supporters argue that this intentional design makes the code easy to both write and maintain. This is especially important as a great deal of extant COBOL code is now quite old, and the original developers are likely to have moved on. And the future seems assured, as COBOL vendors continue to add features, such as Microsoft .NET functionality which provides a means to integrate COBOL with Windows' .NET framework.
              After the emergence of Fortran and COBOL, IBM developed PL/I (Programming Language One) in the 1960s with the aim of uniting the architectures and programming paradigms of business and scientific computing. Widely used in business data processing, PL/I supported and supports a range of ground-breaking endeavours, including the US Apollo space programme and Sabre, the airline reservation system. With the growth of PC, however, most of PL/I's advantages were overtaken by existing mainframe languages and by the emerging small systems languages such as C. IBM's competitors and customers saw little advantage in supporting or using either, and critics claimed that it was slow and complex to master. Although still in use, the mainstream has long since passed it by.
         No discussion of mainframe programming languages would be complete without a mention of Java. Increasing numbers of applications are being developed in Java because of its portability. It runs inside a Java Virtual Machine, which provides its portability, and applications written in this object-oriented, open-source language can run compiled and so quickly. Skill sets are widespread. Although more of a CPU and memory hog than C++, to whose syntax it bears strong similarities, if you can program in C++, Java is easy. So popular has Java become on the mainframe that IBM's justification for the introduction of the System z Application Assist Processor (zAAP) was to run Java applications cheaper and more efficient.
C++ is also widespread and available on a multitude of platforms but unlike Java, exposes low-level facilities. This means of course that it is not as portable as applications are likely to be reliant on OS-specific API calls. With care though, source code can be written to be platform-independent. Perhaps the most compact distinction between C++ and Java is that C++ is powerful and designed for a wide range of programming tasks, while Java was designed to be simple and easy to learn with a powerful cross-platform library. Its flexibility means that programming can be procedural or object-oriented.
             This is not and cannot be an exhaustive list of all available programming languages but I have included most languages in use by most developers today. Think I’ve missed your favourite mainframe programming language? Leave me a comment and let me know.

True Facts about Mainframe

Hello Dear Friends, 
     I am herewith some of the true & important facts @ Mainframe, Its Very Interesting & much more demanding. So some of the facts are as  
 
Mainframe facts.....!!!!!

1. All 25 of the world’s top banks still use mainframes, while 71 per cent of global Fortune 500 companies are mainframe clients as well. Additionally, nine out of the top 10 global health insurance providers process all of their high-volume transactions on a mainframe. This shows that, despite incursions being made by software as a service (SaaS) providers, an overwhelming majority of the world’s big business still value the reliability and security of mainframes, particularly for mission-critical functions.

2. Around 63 per cent of mainframe sites in the Asia-Pacific region believe the lack of skills in the current generation of mainframers is a major concern. In Europe, 66 per cent of mainframe sites believe mainframes are already suffering from a serious skills shortage.

3. About 72% of mainframe sites have mainframe staff eligible for retirement. (CA 2011)

4. The mainframes hold approximately " 70 % " of the entire data stored in this planet
5. The latest ones can support over 25,000 users
6. They can support devices spread over 26 miles using fibre optics
7. The size of the "basic" OS is about 14 GB
8. This OS comes in about 57 magnetic tapes, But latest with 4 tapes
9. It takes ATLEAST a month to install and customize a basic mainframe OS configuration
10. It takes around 3 full days for a mainframe to get up and running
11. Basic configuration for development environment costs 8 crores (hardware + Software)
12. A full team of qualified system operators are always required to be on stand by to ensure successful operation
13. Earlier mainframes were provided with cooling pipes through which cold water was passed to cool the system - TCS have one in Chennai facility
14. Recent mainframes have variable speed fans in the cabinet to keep it cool
15. Have u ever heard of a mainframe system being hacked??? Mainframes are one of the most secure data installations ever
16. You cannot buy the mainframe OS, but u'll have to pay a license to use it. The cost?? cool ......1.5 crores a year.
17. Finally, mainframes today r the most preferred data servers for even the most hi-fi of the organizations!
18. So far no virus has attacked Mainframes
      
    So this is how mainframe is...!!!!