Mainframe, MVS and zOS Discussion

hello,

I've experience is with Oracle testing and will need to do mainframe testing now. How should I get started ? Should I start with learning COBOL, JCL, DB2 ?

Thanks

As far as testing is concerned, the concepts remain same. You might need to do a "black box testing" or a "white box". OTOH, learning COBOL, JCL and DB2 might give you an added advantage to understand the code when you do a white box testing, however, it's not mandatory to do the testing - IMHO.

If you are running batch jobs then you definitely need JCL. You don't need to know everything - just the basics. As someone new to the mainframe world you would not be expected to know everything on day 1. Just find out where the manuals are. And learn that control cards are not JCL but are control cards and are documented in the manuals for the programs that process them.

Thanks for the guidance. I'll keep these things in mind.