Mainframe, MVS and zOS Discussion

Hi,

We have some fresh engineering graduate joining our team. Our lead very dynamic and he has made a pretty good introduction to these fresh graduates to start their career with mainframes. He has now asked some os us to think some exercise to give these new graduates to work upon so that they can get familiar:

• 1. Mainframe COBOL, JCL, VSAM, DB2 and IMS in general.
  2. They can be more inclined toward these technologies.

Could you please suggest on this?

We've thought like:

1. Two file matching program in COBOL.
2. Read a VSAM file and write a report.

Apart from using our own company provided mainframe, are there some more place where one can practice mainframe so that these new team mates can get more hands on?

If they are just fresh graduate, good to make them familiar with COBOL program compilation process. Then let them analyze the Job which is created in the background. May be ask them to write a simple smallest COBOL program which can be compiled and introduce an error or two to make them understand where to look for errors and how to start resolving them for it.

You've already given a file handling program to them, which sounds like a good start.

You can ask them to analyse some of the existing programs, this will also help them.