Mainframe, MVS and zOS Discussion

Hi,

In a recent interview, which was telephonic, the interviewer asked me "in how many ways we can send the data out of mainframes?"

This question was not clear to me. I asked for the clarification and he has repeated the same sentence multiple time. I am not sure what he was looking for but I answered that: data on mainframes can be send or recieved, if needs to be accessed from the "open systems" either by XML or MQ series. Then he asked how do you handle data in XML. I sadi, using XML parser...

But I am not usre what he was after...do you think the question could be answered better?

I would have mentioned FTP, SMTP, APPC, XCF, $INDFILE, and HTTP -- XCF is very specialized but technically the data goes out from the mainframe. The others are all ways for an application to send data from one system to another. Manually keying data into another system from a printout would also be a transfer method but it is stretching the definition, I think.

Via tape (and, in the good ol' days, removable disk pack). MSS cartridge - any removable storage volume, in fact.