Re: How many sites still on V1.5 or earlier?
- From: mark.zelden@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Mark Zelden)
- Date: 2 Apr 2007 08:29:30 -0700
On Mon, 2 Apr 2007 14:55:39 +0000, Dave Salt <dsalt@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
From: Mark Zelden <mark.zelden@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
I admit I don't like ISV products that
seem to require a version upgrade with every OS upgrade
If a vendor keeps his products up-to-date with the latest OS, and has logic
to ensure he doesn't try to run features that aren't available in an earlier
OS, I think customers should be able to install the latest version of the
vendor product regardless of what version of the OS they're running. That
way, they don't need to re-install the vendor product everytime they upgrade
their OS.
Sort of. Again, you are over simplifying and probably thinking about how you
handle this for your ISPF product, which could really be considered more of an
"application" than "system software".
Eventually of course their OS will catch up to and exceed the
vendor product, at which point they'd need to install the latest version of
the vendor product. But at least this would avoid some of the installs.
If I upgrade my OS once a year when IBM comes out with new versions
(or twice a year in the past), then I still have to potentially upgrade
the vendor product twice a year or my OS will exceed the vendor
product. It's a catch 22. I understand that if I (as Paul said) install
your current version now it will run on lower level OS version. So what.
When I upgrade the OS 6 months from now, it still could break if IBM changes
something that you didn't expect them to and I don't keep current on your
product also. New version, current maintenance, whatever.
If someone is running an old release of a vendor product on a new OS, the
old vendor product wouldn't have the newly introduced 'WHIZBANG' command.
The feature wouldn't be mentioned anywhere in the product, and the user
wouldn't try to execute it. But if they did try to execute it for whatever
reason, they'd see a "Command not found" message (or whatever).
You keep thinking of *your* software. What about a product that references
a control block that has moved above the line or above the bar? Even
something as "harmless" as PDS86 broke with 1.8 because of the CAX moving
above the line. Unless you are Carnac you can't code for a change now
that will happen in a future release that hasn't been disclosed to you from
IBM.
I'm not saying this would work in every situation and for every type of
product. I'm just saying that for certain types of products it's a way to
take some of the workload off the customers.
Only if I installed a more current version of the ISV software than the
OS software. So the ISV software still has to be kept current. To bring
it close to home, are you willing to give me a written guarantee that if I
purchase and install Simplist now that *all* functions will work when I upgrade
to the OS version that follows z/OS 1.8 without any fixes or upgrades to
your software? How about 2 OS versions down the road (you may already
have access to and be testing with the version that follows 1.8)?
So in the spirit of how this thread started... you need to stay on supported
versions and sometimes you need to be on a current version if the
other software on your system is also very current. It's the price you
pay for being bleeding edge. If not, you run the risk of something breaking.
On the other hand, if you run a EOS release of the OS and don't change the
supporting ISV software or introduce new hardware to the environment, you
can still have a very stable production environment. I've mentioned this
before... I still have an ex client happily running OS/390 2.6 that has zero
outages and very rarely IPLs. But they are also running the same versions
of all the ISV software that they were running when they upgraded to
OS/390 2.6.
Mark
--
Mark Zelden
Sr. Software and Systems Architect - z/OS Team Lead
Zurich North America / Farmers Insurance Group: G-ITO
mailto:mark.zelden@xxxxxxxxxxxx
z/OS and OS390 expert at http://searchDataCenter.com/ateExperts/
Systems Programming expert at http://expertanswercenter.techtarget.com/
Mark's MVS Utilities: http://home.flash.net/~mzelden/mvsutil.html
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