The MVS-TK5 system

This is divided into 2 areas: System and Applications

In the mainframe world, there are a few “areas” which have various titles and responsibilties.

Search on-line for all the titles.

The two important ones for this environment are “System Administrator” and “Application Programmer”.

The System Administrator will:

• Update the System
• Add/update/delete Software
• Add/remove devices(DASD, TAPE, etc.)
• Create new JCL/Proclib jobs to do things
• Create new userids
• Check the system to see if there are any issues/problems

The Application Programmer will:

• Create/Write/Refactor/Delete applications (aka: programs)
• Run JCL jobs to compile/run the programs
• Test and debug the programs

The majority of the tutorials will be about Applications.

However, it will start out with System Administration.

Most posts or videos demonstrate installing MVS-TK5(or the previous TK4- system) and then run one of the pre-installed COBOL programs, which is actually a JCL jobstream with the COBOL program embedded as SYSIN, and say, “Look, you can run COBOL programs!”.

But, that is not the typical environment an Application Programmer works in.

So, System Administration will create an environment that is closer to the “real world”.