A Rabbit Hole With Symbols

This edition, we thought we'd do an article about z/OS system symbols. As we dived deeper into this 'rabbit hole', it was clear that this was going to take two technical articles: one introducing symbols, and one with more information about how to use them.

Earlier this year, we worked with ProTech Training to change university graduates into mainframers as part of Rocket Software's NextGen Academy in our home town of Perth, Western Australia. In our management article, David Stephens looks at five ways he tried to prevent everyone from dying of boredom in the classroom. It's been a busy period for Longpela Expertise. In July of this year, David Stephens sat down for CPT Global with 21 Century Software's Josh Stiles to talk about performance, talent and the AI question.

David has also published an article in CIO about when a system become legacy, and how this is like a romantic relationship.

We hope you enjoy this issue.

management: Five Ideas I Tried to Make Classroom Lessons Less Boring

Earlier this year, I was engaged to transform 10 university graduates to mainframers. I had doubts: How could I help my students survive through six months stuck in a classroom? How could I make it interesting, not just for them, but for me? My god, how was I going to survive this?

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technical: The Ultimate Guide to z/OS System Symbols Part 1 – What Are They?

Wouldn't it be nice if you could use a system-level variable anywhere: in JCL, PARMLIB, z/OS commands, UNIX shells.

It would be even better if you could trust this variable: it would be set by the z/OS systems administrator or z/OS itself: no one else. Well, there's good news, and it's called z/OS System Symbols.

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technical: The Ultimate Guide to z/OS System Symbols Part 2 – Using Symbols

z/OS System symbols are z/OS system level variables that are set by the z/OS systems programmer, or z/OS itself. This is great, but how do you use these symbols?

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