[Info-vax] OpenVMS async I/O, fast vs. slow

[bill]

On 11/5/2023 9:28 AM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 11/3/2023 8:35 PM, Jake Hamby (Solid State Jake) wrote:
>> Something else just occurred to me. While file I/O performance is
>> important, as well as local IPC, I've also been keeping in mind
>> something else: simultaneous socket connections. One benefit of
>> everyone going to RESTful APIs is you're not keeping a long-lived TCP
>> socket open like you would with other types of protocols.
> 
> HTTP does support keep-alive.
> 
> And RESTful web services do use that. Especially for high volume
> server to server setups.
> 
>> There have been a lot of posts on my LinkedIn feed from IBM
>> mainframers and they are more excited than ever about IBM's latest
>> hardware which is very fast at running COBOL, Java, Go, C++, Db2,
>> CICS, IMS, TSO/E, ISPF, Python. Technologies from every decade.
>>
>> Mainframes are great for all the applications that are difficult to
>> shard. Giant databases of bank transactions. I think software
>> engineers want every problem to be something you can shard and
>> parallelize to run in an AWS or Google cluster, but you can't do that
>> with billions of lines of COBOL. But the reason everyone's still
>> using that COBOL is that there's no real gain from rewriting it
>> because the problems can't be solved in some new way.
> 
> There are banks switching from Cobol on mainframe to newer
> technologies. Newer technologies that reduce cost significantly
> and are more online/24x7 friendly. The benefits from changing
> are there.
> 
> But so are the cost. The migration will cost a fortune. All the
> bugs introduced when migrating such large code bases will have
> a huge indirect cost. And the lost profits from not adding new features
> while migrating could be huge also.
> 
> So only a few CIO's chose to actually migrate. Most CIO's chose to
> create new stuff using new technologies and put new technologies in
> front of the mainframe instead of replacing the mainframe. A part of
> those in the latter category has a "we will migrate in
> <current year + 5 years>" roadmap.

And, so the story goes.

In 1980 I was a COBOL Programmer/Systems Analyst on IBM and Univac
Mainframes.  Trade journals were already saying "COBOL is dead".
And yet, it went on.  Two of the largest ISes in the country (probably
the world) were COBOL. Still are today and there is no plan or sign that
they will ever be replaced with another language.  There was a third.
Contractor opted to not renew and the program died.  Not because of any
flaws in COBOL but because academia refuses to teach it even as an
elective.  System belonged to the contractor so stayed with them.  New
system written from scratch in god only knows what language, Some
language du jour.  The new system is slow, cumbersome, error prone and
lacks many of the features that the old system had.

We have so many "colleges" teaching trade school courses (like diesel
mechanics, HVAC welding and even motorcycle mechanics)I really wish
trade schools would step up to the plate ad start teaching IT and in
particular thing like COBOL, Fortran and PL/I.  They are not going away.

bill