Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1999 07:53:26 -0500
Reply-To: RAITHEM <RAITHEM@WESTAT.COM>
Sender: "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From: RAITHEM <RAITHEM@WESTAT.COM>
Subject: (MVS): Re[2]: (MVS): Re:SAS on a Mainframe
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At the end of his very helpful posting, Walter Smith wrote the following:
<< Walter's entire posting can be found after the Sig line, below>>
>But Mr Raithel! OS/390 "that most satisfying of all operating
>systems"???!!! What do you do for fun? fingers in the light socket?
>
Walter, well of course not, don't be ridiculous; I have not had my fingers in a
light socket since 1977! For fun these days, I close and lock my office door at
lunch time. Then I unlock my file cabinet and spend and exhilarating hour
"shooting" mainframe COBOL and PL/1 hexadecimal dumps left over from the
mid-80's! My colleagues can never understand why I always have that big grin on
my face after lunch. But, shhhhhhh; let's just keep this between us!
I hope that this explanation proves helpful now, and in the future!
Of course, all of these opinions and insights are my own, and do not
reflect those of my organization or my associates.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Michael A. Raithel
E-mail: maraithel@mcimail.com
Author: Tuning SAS Applications in the MVS Environment
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
We are all here for a spell, get all the good laughs you can. -- Will Rogers
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
<<<Walter's original posting>>>
Mr Raithel is not kidding when he talks of the power of the "Big Iron".
I routinely run a job that reads about 3.6M records from tape in about
30 seconds!! It crunches it (that would be proc crunch ... or maybe
proc summary), about 24 seconds and writes the result to a file, 4
seconds. This would take considerably longer on our (very fast) Sun
6000 box.
However, my condolences for having to wrestle with MVS, JCL, TSO, etc.
It isn't fun or pretty. I started with key punches, card decks and
overnight processing (1977) and have become proficient with TSO, JCL,
ISPF (for the kibitsers - yes I've written systems using ISPF panels,
JCL skeletons, etc), Rexx, CMS. EXEC, EXEC2, then to DOS, and batch
files, and finally to Unix and shell scripting. And in all that, the
big iron stands out with the most unfriendly, inaccessible and obtuse
OSs ever engraved in silicon!!
However, I don't recommend trying to write code on the PC, then sending
it to the mainframe for testing. For me, this was very frustrating,
akin to trying to develop a spreadsheet over the phone with my wife at
the keyboard.
Fastest route to productivity - some good advice already given:
- get copies of JCL from co-workers
- ask lots of question of your local folks
- and I agree with recommending Mr Brown's book
But you don't have to run in batch ("wrap your program in JCL to submit
them in batch"). The three easiest ways to develop SAS programs for the
mainframe:
1) run SAS in "noninteractive mode" - you use an editor (the mainframe
ISPF editor) to create your SAS code, including the filename statements
that you need, submit it to SAS using the SAS "command" (actually a
proc, so you'll have to have the right libraries allocated - if you can
run SAS interactively, you can also do this). This option runs your
programs imediately, without waiting 10 minutes to several hours while
your job sits in the input queue, waiting to start.
2) run interactive SAS (with an editor as bad as the mainframe editor),
but you should learn it anyway,
3) LAST, use an editor to create your programs and "wrap" them in JCL
and submit them in batch.
But Mr Raithel! OS/390 "that most satisfying of all operating
systems"???!!! What do you do for fun? fingers in the light socket?
