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Did You See the SDF III Announcement? :-)
Some blog readers might know Screen Definition Facility II (SDF II). This IBM tool helps developers create common, easy-to-use 3270 user interfaces more quickly. SDF II has been around for at least two decades, and that greatly exceeds my professional IT career, so I can only guess there was an original SDF I. (Was there?) SDF is still popular, and you can still order it.
If you close your eyes (permanently) and pretend that mainframes didn't evolve over the past 20 years, SDF II is the end of your story. You'd believe that there's no other way for a user to interact with a mainframe, at least directly, except through 3270 terminal screens. Who wouldn't prefer a mouse and graphical interface, particularly a Web interface? OK, maybe the airline check-in agent, who is still a lot faster getting you onto your flight using the traditional interface.
I'm still not sure why so many people get this aspect of mainframes wrong, that the mainframe requires a particular user interface.
Today at IBM, a mainframe serves most of our "w3" internal Web pages. (Because it's the most cost-effective solution.) If you polled IBMers to ask what server provides those pages, most wouldn't have a clue. Except for the fact "w3" works extra-reliably and with consistently excellent performance, users cannot perceive any differences.
We use a great deal of WebSphere Portal on our mainframe — it's our SDF III, so to speak. IBM also introduced WebSphere Dashboard Framework Version 6.0 for both z/OS and Linux on System z late this year. Together with Portal, Dashboard Framework delivers personalized content with advanced user controls. There are features like charting, alerting, and what I call "business blogging." Anything that a Web browser can do a mainframe can deliver, and the tools to create advanced user interfaces are quite sophisticated. There's a good demo available if you want to see what 2007's mainframe looks like to its users.
If WebSphere Portal, Dashboard Framework, and Lotus ActiveInsight (which runs on Linux on z) are too amazing, you should know that for years every copy of z/OS, and OS/390 before it, has included the IBM HTTP Server. Please start using it if you're aren't already. It's historical fact that the first Web server anywhere outside Switzerland was Stanford University's mainframe, and the first interactive Web application anywhere on the planet provided access to live mainframe information. You can download PHP for z/OS for example, at no charge, to build your own interactive Web applications. CICS Transaction Server also has HTTP capability at no additional charge. So do z/TPF and all the popular Linux on z distributions.
I'm still not sure why people are surprised when I point out these facts. Maybe the historic popularity of 3270 terminals (and terminal emulation) disguises the fact that mainframes have always provided multiple user interfaces over the years. Before I was born almost everyone interacted with mainframes via punch cards, and paper-based typewriter-like devices served as the interactive terminals of their era. Telephone interaction with mainframes via tone dialing came along and is still popular. GDDM and its predecessors provided fully graphical user interaction, even before the Macintosh and Microsoft Windows. Light pens and graphical vector displays were used starting at least 50 years ago. Now we have Web user interfaces, so is it any great surprise that mainframes started speaking HTML and HTTP before nearly every other server did?
I mention this issue because it's quite important to bust this particular myth, that the mainframe has only one type of (old fashioned) user interface. Most business users want graphical Web interfaces, so if you're not delivering them, who (what) will? I directly interact with a mainframe every day, but I cannot remember the last time I used a 3270 terminal emulator. The face you present to your users is critical, just as the face your company presents to your customers determines your business success.
There's nothing wrong with terminal interfaces per se, and many users are quite productive with them. I have a guess that many blog readers happen to like this traditional user interface, but what you use and prefer shouldn't influence the service you deliver to most business users.
Enjoy SDF III — er, WebSphere Dashboard Framework. :-)
| by Timothy Sipples | December 10, 2007 in Innovation Permalink |
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Comments
It was SDF/CICS, IIRC. I wrote the UK Country demoes for SDF-II and CSP back in 1987.
Posted by: Martin Packer | Dec 10, 2007 3:08:12 PM
>> . . . You'd believe that there's no other way for a user to interact with a mainframe . . .
Of course there are other ways for a user to interact with a mainframe. There are punch cards, paper tape, magnetic drum storage, and the IPL input panel for those real bleeding edge types.
Hey, Is anybody up for hand wiring their own application patch boards?!?
Next, we can churn our own butter and make sweaters out of sheep.
Posted by: Robyn Harris | Dec 12, 2007 5:05:03 PM
