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Czech: Wow ... let's see what I can do to help ... and hopefully not help confuse you worse than you already are.
From a purely technical perspective, the programming skill sets are about equal. The environmental skill sets are where there might be some variations in supply and demand. Most young folks today are PC literate, but have no idea what a mainframe is or does. Typically, the PC types get a chuckle out of what has to be done to make this legacy code "do its thing" on a mainframe. Let's face it ... the latest and greatest software runs on the latest and greatest machines ... PC's. The legacy code that runs the majority of corporate data centers was written for and executes on a mainframe. An old, antiquated, dinosaurial, mainframe.
For today's tools that execute on a PC or UNIX (like ALYD's), the user's source code must be accessible from the "box" the tools run on. Since the majority of Y2K affected code is on the mainframe, that code must be copied to a disk/CD that is then input to the tool. See the following writeup for how ALYD does their thing: alydaar.com. Initial Lab Compilation
The problem with the PC approach is that when a Source Library Manager is in use on the mainframe, the source code is not in a readily copyable (is that a word?) format. There must be a manual (or, hopefully somewhat automated) process in the creation of the disk/CD that will make the ++INC and -INC commands look like COPY commands. Or, the PC tool must be able to emulate EVERY function that the Library Manager performs. Since the Library Managers were stand alone products in their own right, they have some rather obscure functionality that if not emulated properly will provide inaccurate source code snippets. Thus, the PC tool will not be able to scan correctly.
In summary, the PC/UNIX scans will take longer to set up than the mainframe scans, primarily because of the environmental concern noted above. It's hard to predict how much extra time it will take to remove the Library Manager footprints, because it depends solely on the functionality used by any given site.
That's why I prefer the mainframe style tool. Environmental concerns are practically avoided. That's one less headache that the poor Y2K Project Manager has to be concerned about.
If you're interested in other gotcha's involved with the Y2K problem, may I suggest living in the mainframe environment for a few years? It ain't as easy as it looks.
Regards,
TED |
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