Mainframe Systems Research Articles

Challenges and Solutions in Testing Mainframe Applications in Modern Banking

Because the foundation of their operations is still housed in legacy systems, banks continue to use them. Banks must modify their systems to remain competitive in light of the swift changes in technology and customer needs. Mainframe systems have been an integral part of corporate computing for many years, enabling critical applications across a range of industries, including banking, retail, and healthcare. There is rising interest in leveraging Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to expose these old apps' data and features, hence accelerating the construction of new applications and maximising their capability and enabling their reuse. Nonetheless, there are several obstacles to overcome in the process of locating and making available APIs for various business use cases. In this study, we examine the difficulties involved in developing APIs for mainframe systems that are no longer in use and suggest a unique architecture to enable communication for a range of use cases. We performed a qualitative poll with nine mainframe developers, whose average experience was fifteen years, to evaluate the efficacy of our methodology. We were able to determine which APIs were candidates and how long it would take to implement them for two industry mainframe applications and the public mainframe application GENAPP thanks to the poll. We create a list of artefacts, such as screens, transactions, business rules, inter-micro service calls, control flow blocks, and data accesses, in order to identify APIs. IBM Watsonx Code Assistant for Z Refactoring Assistant includes an implementation for computing API signatures. We proved the practicality of our technique by running the discovered APIs on an IBM Z mainframe system to assess their accuracy.

BEST PRACTICES FOR IMPLEMENTING HYPERCONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE (HCI) IN MODERN DATA CENTERS

Data centers have evolved from mainframe systems to advanced hyperconverged infrastructures (HCI) that integrate compute, storage, networking, and virtualization into a single system. This document outlines best practices for adopting HCI to address common data center challenges, streamline operations, and improve resource utilization.

The RAS Paradigm in Mainframe Systems: A Comprehensive Analysis of Design Principles and Operational Benefits

This article examines the critical role of Reliability, Availability, and Serviceability (RAS) in mainframe computing systems. We explore how RAS principles have become fundamental design features in modern mainframes, enhancing their ability to meet the demanding requirements of enterprise-level data processing. The article provides an in-depth analysis of each RAS component, detailing how reliability is achieved through robust hardware self-checking and extensive software testing, availability is maintained via seamless component failover and layered error recovery, and serviceability is ensured through advanced diagnostic capabilities and modular replacement units. We argue that the holistic integration of RAS principles in mainframe architecture not only maximizes system uptime and operational continuity but also significantly impacts application design and overall system efficiency. Through a comprehensive review of current mainframe technologies and industry practices, this article highlights the enduring importance of RAS in an era of increasing computational complexity and datadriven decision making. Our findings suggest that RAS principles will continue to evolve, playing a crucial role in shaping the future of high-performance, mission-critical computing systems.

Ethical Hacking Techniques

Abstract: The term ‘Hacker’ was defined to describe experts who utilize their skills to re-develop mainframe systems, increasing their capability and allowing them to multi-task. Nowadays, the term commonly describes skilled programmers who gain unauthorized access into computer systems by exploiting weaknesses or by using bugs, motivated either by malice or mischief. For example, a hacker can produce algorithms to crack passwords, penetrate networks, or even disrupt network services. The number one cause of malicious/unethical hacking entails stealing precious records or monetary advantage. However, now no longer all hacking is dreadful. This brings us to another type of hacking: Ethical hacking

Importance and Application of COBOL in Banking Sectors

COBOL stands for COmmon Business Oriented Language. One of the first of the high-level languages, it was put together by a group sponsored by the Department of Defense to develop a common business language. That group came to be called CODASYL—the Committee on Data Systems Languages—and defined a “common business oriented language,” Banks invested several millions in designing Mainframe systems architectures to respond to the business requirements. Whether that was a bank statement or an on-line money wiring transaction. COBOL became a reality. And became a liability. Moving from it meant to invest too much money in infrastructure and training and adding up the risk of fail on mission critical business functions. (I keep to my self that the most sensitive part of the human body is the pocket. And a Bank is nothing a huge pocket). This research paper will tell us about the importance and several applications of COBOL in banking sectors through several studies and their respective results.

IBM z14: Processor Characterization and Power Management for High-Reliability Mainframe Systems

The IBM z14 is the latest update in the storied history of IBM mainframes. Reliability, availability, security, and scalability are the foundation of the IBM mainframe line. System reliability and availability targets are in excess of 10 years, requiring rigorous chip characterization processes. In this paper, we discuss some of the many processes used to ensure that lifetime. An additional part of this reliability is power management (PM). The 5.2-GHz high-power design of the central processor chip requires advanced on-die PM capabilities to adapt to power intensive instruction streams. We also discuss a number of improvements to the critical path monitoring design used to manage power supply voltage droops, reducing response time and the impact on system performance. Finally, we compare a set of simulations and hardware results to validate our power fluctuation models.

A platform and analytics for usage and entitlement analytics

As illustrated by recent high-profile cases such as WikiLeaks and Snowden, information exfiltration is one of the key motivations for cyber-attacks. In this paper, we describe our approach to detect misuse of authorizations by insiders based on detection of anomalous user activity. Our system is based on novel machine learning algorithms to build multidimensional user profiles, which are then used to alert administrators upon detection of significant deviation in a user's behavior. Key.components to our profiling are generative models of user activity, which are intended to produce the best probabilistic model to explain observed activity. We have deployed these models on a range of applications such as monitoring access to source code repositories, security subsystem activity in mainframe systems, web application logs, and other proprietary applications. Extensive testing of our system with more than six years of user activity, and multiple red-teaming exercises have enabled us to tune our analytics to produce accurate results with very low false positive rates. Our analytic models are currently in use today to monitor a number of sensitive assets within IBM.

Health Tourism Contribution to the Structural Dynamics of the Territorial Systems with Tourism Functionality

The study aims to identify the role of health tourism (SPA) in developing the territorial systems, characterized by the tourism functionality, in Romania, for the period 2000-2012, a period marked by spectacular transformations, especially for this economic sector. Tourism has now become a true economic engine, generating an increase in the functional complexity of the territorial system, which is based on exploiting tourism resources. To quantify how tourism has contributed to the economic development of these territorial systems in Romania a database of NACE codes was set up, specific for the tourism activity, for the period 2000-2012, for territorial mainframe systems with functionality resort. Based on this statistical support analyzes on the evolution of the number of companies, number of employees, turnover and profit were made. The results show the important role of health tourism in generating multiplier effects on other components of the economic subsystem. They were defined two categories of territorial systems: territorial systems where tourism plays a complementary role function and territorial systems in which health tourism has a preeminent role in the local economy.

IT Penetration in Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises

Information technology (IT) has become a vital and integral part of every business plan. From multinational corporations who maintain mainframe systems and databases to small businesses, IT plays an important role. The principal objective of the present research is to know the Information Technology (IT) penetration in Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) sector. The study is conducted as field survey of 62 discrete manufacturers of MSMEs around the industrial areas of Hyderabad. Survey is conducted with the help of questionnaire designed to understand the level of IT usage (concentrating on web technology) in their day-to-day operations. Data are analyzed with the help of statistical tools and the results show that the MSME sector is resistant to Information Technology (IT) for their day-to-day operations. There is a wide scope for technological growth in MSMEs which is suitable for the sector. The final part provides some future policy framework for the sustainability of the sector.

Critical Dimensions of Disaster Recovery Planning

Disaster Recovery Planning (DRP) emerged in the 1970s, during the era of electronic data processing when mainframe systems were used to crunch data and provide reports for business analysis. The importance of DRP is undeniable especially after the 911 terrorism attack and many natural disasters experienced by many countries; much effort has then poured in to maintain a set of workable DRP. However, though high investment is allocated for information technology and DRP, there are still IT service outages interrupted the business, crippled the operations and impacted the overall organization long term strategic plan. Questions arose on why DRP couldnot ensure an uninterrupted IT service environment. This paper aims to study the critical dimensions impacting the development and maintenance of DRP process, specifically to understand the dimensions that contribute to asuccessful DRP that aims to minimize the impacts of IT service outages. This study used a theoretical model, technology-organization-environment framework (TOE) to explore the adoption of DRP process in financial institutions in Malaysia. Following IT service management concept, individual components that comprise oftrading partner readiness, staff competency, roles and responsibilities were included in the study. This study evidenced that 8 dimensions were critical for the implementation of DRP, in which 2 of 3 individual componentsbeing studied were part of the lists. These 8 dimensions could be used as guidance for future successful DRP roll out and its ongoing maintenance activities; with the ultimate objective to minimize outage duration of ITservices that support critical business.

Adolescence of CALL

Pioneering mainframe systems like PLATO brought CALL through infancy and childhood, but the Apple II defined the field's adolescence. Adolescence is a time of exploration, a time of energy and exuberance, a time when old ways are discarded, a time when new identities are born and born again. As the child is father of the man, adolescence presages maturity, and it was the Apple II that pioneered the present and future course of CALI. Certainly, it shaped my own growth and development as a researcher.

Cosmological Simulations and Data Exploration: a Testcase on the Usage of Grid Infrastructure

While new infrastructures for large computational challenges begin to be widely accessible to researchers, computational codes need to be re-designed to exploit new facilities. The Grid and the cloud computing concepts are changing the computational resource distribution and availability, and much effort start to be made to develop new codes for a better exploitation of new resources. This paper presents an example of the use of Grid resources, based on gLite middleware, to run cosmological simulations, that, up to now, are normally executed on Supercomputers. We have also used the Grid to explore and visualize the dataset. We discuss non particular the performance of FLY a parallel code implementing the octal-tree algorithm introduced by J. Barnes and P. Hut to compute the gravitational field efficiently. It simulates the evolution of the collisionless component of the material content of our Universe. FLY was originally developed to run on mainframe systems using the one-side communication paradigm, but we are now presenting a modified version of the computational algorithm to exploit the Grid environment. We also integrated the data exploration and visualization process on the Grid, to obtain preliminary results using the distributed facilities.

Administering Departmental Databases

Coping with the expanding demands for information placed upon an organization is becoming more and more difficult. Individual units within organizations often feel these demands more keenly than others. The mainframe systems run by organizations are often overburdened and backlogged with requests, and thus are unable to respond quickly to such demands. Creating and maintaining a departmental database utilizing current technology can be an appropriate solution to such problems, but require careful design and implementation.

Bottom-up and top-down COBOL system migration to Web Services: An experience report

Moving from mainframe systems to a service-oriented architecture (SOA) using Web services is an attractive but daunting task. The bottom-up or direct-migration approach enables the effective modernization of legacy systems to Web services. Conversely, bringing migration into fruition with the top-down or indirect-migration approach is more difficult, but it achieves better migration results. Employing both approaches on the same large enterprise system is uncommon, which leaves no room for comparison. This article describes the migration processes, costs, and outcomes of applying both approaches on a real Cobol system.

Reverse Engineering on the Mainframe: Lessons Learned from "In Vivo" Research

Despite growth in popularity of desktop systems, Web applications, and mobile mainframe systems remain dominant force in large-scale enterprise computing. Although they're sometimes referred to as the dinosaurs of computing, even mainframe systems must adapt to changing circumstances to survive. Although reverse-engineering and reengineering techniques can help identify and achieve these adaptations, current techniques are mainly geared mainly toward more modern environments, languages, and platforms. It remains to be seen whether successful techniques can be easily transferred to a mainframe context. This article reports on application of two proven reverse-engineering techniques (software visualization and feature location) in context of mainframe systems. The authors conclude that these techniques remain viable but become very labor intensive when implemented on a per-project basis.

Strategic Approaches to ERP Implementation

ABSTRACT Strategic reasoning behind ERP triggers a specific path to ERP implementation. In this article we present a simple typology of ERP implementation approaches based on literature review and an empirical research for both manufacturing and services. We distinguish between bottom-up and top-down approaches and between process-oriented and technology-oriented approaches and we discuss the differences between the four resulting types of implementation approaches. INTRODUCTION During the 1980's and 1990's, many organizations were growing through mergers and acquisitions resulting in ever higher levels of systems incompatibility (involving different legacy-type mainframe systems). At the multinational level such issues only multiplied several-fold (Ives & Jarvenpaa, 1993). The challenges of increasing competition and expanding markets, the search for business solutions in the face of the changes resulting from mergers, acquisitions, take-over and restructuring processes, and rising customer expectations increased the pressure on firms to manage total costs in the supply chain, to shorten throughput times, reduce inventories, expand product variety, provide more reliable delivery dates and better customer service, improve quality, and efficiently coordinate global demand, supply, and production (Shankarnarayanan, 2000; Umble, 2003). ERP systems were offered with the promise that they would meet many if not all of these challenges simultaneously. On the other hand, the demand for ERP software packages was also driven by frustration with information system departments' inability to cope with systems integration (Holland & Light, 1999), the year 2000 problem, and the consolidation of currencies in Europe (Chung & Snyder, 1999). Developments in large, globalized companies were subsequently followed by smaller, local firms equipping themselves with custom-designed and/or industry designed packages primarily to lower their costs and add value in their services to their clients (e.g., local ERP suppliers: Acto, Exact, Caseware, etc). ERP implementation enables the convergence of organizational knowledge throughout the firm (Baskerville, 2000). This convergence may draw together functional areas within the organization such as manufacturing, purchasing, inventory management, and transportation, and generate synergies that lead to more efficient product flows throughout the enterprise (Davenport, 1998). ERP software packages strive to support essentially all the processes in a firm's value chain. Most IT managers responsible for managing their organizations' ERP project viewed the ERP systems as their organizations' most strategic planning platform (Sweat, 1998). Yet despite the scope of offerings, most customers inevitably found that at least 20% of their needed functionality was missing from the package they had selected (Scott & Kaindall, 2000). The early literature on ERP implementation reflects the fact that ERP started mainly with larger companies and was then taken up by smaller ones. It tends to describe the needs and opportunities of small companies as a subset of those facing large companies. (Markus, 2001) To a large extent, the development of ERP packages and accompanying implementation routines were based on the same assumptions. In the course of time, however, it has become clear that there is a wide variety of motives for ERP adoption, even among large corporations, but also between large and small firms and between firms from different sectors. These differences in motive have an impact on the implementation approach and the subsequent implementation process. Some companies have largely technical reasons, mainly replacement of legacy systems and Y2K problems, for investing in enterprise systems. Other companies focus largely on business reasons for adopting enterprise systems. They expect to derive a competitive advantage from the adoption of such systems. …

Mainframe makeovers

It seems that the mention of SOA (service-oriented architecture) alone is enough to release the funds needed for IT departments to modernise mainframes. But should departments use SOA to drive traditional legacy mainframe upgrades under the guise of making systems SOA compliant? The IT industry has been at a loss when it comes to legacy mainframe systems. 'To modernise, or not to modernise?' has been the unanswered question of recent years. Legacy mainframe managed systems and associated maintenance costs are a considerable drain on IT department budgets. The costs are high because of interactions between the obsolete platforms and non-mainstream languages on which these legacy systems are built. Adoption of SOA has allowed IT departments to sneak in funding for modernisation programs. The underlying question to this trend is whether SOA should be used as a tool for driving forwards traditional legacy mainframe modernisation programmes under the guise of making systems SOA compliant? It appears the SOA name alone can release the funds required for IT departments to modernise their mainframes. What problem is a little white lie if it gets the job done?

IBM POWER6 reliability

This paper describes the state-of-the art reliability features of the IBM POWER6™ microprocessor. The POWER6 microprocessor includes a high degree of detection of soft and hard errors in both dataflow and control logic, as well as a feature—instruction retry recovery (IRR)—usually available only on mainframe systems. IRR provides full hardware error recovery of those registers that are defined by the instruction set architecture. This is accomplished by taking a checkpoint of the defined state for both of the core threads and recovering the machine state back to a known good point. To allow changing memory accessibility without using different page table entries, the POWER6 microprocessor implements virtual page class keys, a new architectural extension that enables the OS (operating system) to manage eight classes of memory with efficiently modifiable access authority for each class. With this feature, malfunctioning kernel extensions can be prevented from destroying OS data that may, in turn, bring an OS down.

The Computer Assist

This article discusses in less than 40 years, a novelty has grown into a mainstay of engineering practice. Only a few forward-looking technology companies invested in computers, primarily mainframe systems. While bringing the benefits of data management and real-time processing to engineering, the mainframes were also a headache. Engineers spent countless hours correcting functional problems and writing programs. The programs, particularly large-scale ones involving difficult computations, were executed in batch processing mode, meaning that the engineer had only one attempt each day to run the programs. The engineering community must advance computer technology to the level where engineers can validate a structure completely using computational tools, without having to develop physical models and prototypes. The next step is cognitive information processing using the computer to actually mimic the attributes of the human brain.

Intel virtualization technology

A virtualized system includes a new layer of software, the virtual machine monitor. The VMM's principal role is to arbitrate accesses to the underlying physical host platform's resources so that multiple operating systems (which are guests of the VMM) can share them. The VMM presents to each guest OS a set of virtual platform interfaces that constitute a virtual machine (VM). Once confined to specialized, proprietary, high-end server and mainframe systems, virtualization is now becoming more broadly available and is supported in off-the-shelf systems based on Intel architecture (IA) hardware. This development is due in part to the steady performance improvements of IA-based systems, which mitigates traditional virtualization performance overheads. Intel virtualization technology provides hardware support for processor virtualization, enabling simplifications of virtual machine monitor software. Resulting VMMs can support a wider range of legacy and future operating systems while maintaining high performance.