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Frankjiang · Posted: Sun Jan 11, 2004 2:52 pm Post subject: What is TSO and ISPF ?

Hi:

I am new guy. Can someone help me ?

Thanks

Frank
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franklin

Mike · Posted: Sun Jan 11, 2004 5:50 pm Post subject:

Well TSO stands for Time Sharing Option, basically it's an environment which allows pretty limited functionality. To edit with TSO (often referred to as native TSO) for exaple you can edit the command EDIT and you'll enter a very basic line editor, which is seldom used nowadays and it would takes ages to do anything useful, but some of us long ago had to use such tools.

Then came ISPF/PDF which runs in a TSO environment but offers much better utilites, such as the editor that, people use. This being a far superior tool than TSO Edit.

Perhaps when you logon you have to enter a command such as ISPF or ISPSTART after seeing the word READY (termed as the READY PROMPT). Well that's TSO, try typing EDIT and have fun, actually don't as you'll probably get confused. You could try typing in IEFBR14 and the ready prompt will re-appear. Then try typing IEFGR14, you'll probably get a message command not found. From this you can determine that IEFBR14 is a valid command, does IEFBR14 ring a bell? well it's an IBM program that does nothing other than complete. What a useless program well not actually but have fun finding out it's use. It wouldn't surprise me if this is the most frequently used program on mainframes. Next issue the command HELP from the ready prompt. Read and play but be careful.

I guess you know a little about ISPF becuase it's probably what you have used anyway.

You could liken this to a PC initally you had DOS and then came along Windows which initially required a DOS environment. DOS, was a line command based interface, whilst windows was a graphical interface.
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Regards,
Mike.

Frankjiang · Posted: Sun Jan 11, 2004 8:19 pm Post subject:

Hello Mike:

Thank you for your answer. It is helpful.

As my understing, TSO and ISPD are kind of terminal like IBM 3270 terminal on which I worked before. Is this correct ?

Sincerely,

Frank
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franklin

Mike · Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2004 2:46 pm Post subject:

Frank,
yes they are user interface programs and they expect to interact with a terminal, eg 3270, however nowadays most people have a PC with an emulator and you even have web based emulators.

The main thing to note though is that ISPF requires TSO (well at least on an MVS system), but ISPF brings with it a far superior interface, I would guess that a very high percentage of people would be unable to work if ISPF were removed to leave only TSO and those that were would probably have a greatly reduced potential for productivity.
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Regards,
Mike.

chandra · Beginner Joined: 26 Sep 2003 Posts: 130 Topics: 36

Hi Mike,

Can we download ISPF emulater software from net?

Regards,
chandra
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Regards,
Chandra

taltyman · Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2004 11:21 am Post subject:

Chandra, I think you are still confused. Maybe you can tell us what you are trying to accomplish. Do you work on an MVS system or are you a student?

The emulator Mike is referring to is a tn3270 emulator that can provide terminal capabilites to an MVS application.

chandra · Beginner Joined: 26 Sep 2003 Posts: 130 Topics: 36

Hi taltyman,

I am talking about the TN3270 Emulator software.

Can we download this software from net?
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Regards,
Chandra

kolusu · Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2004 6:38 am Post subject:

chandra,

You can download a free trail for a month from here.

http://www.tombrennansoftware.com/

Kolusu
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Kolusu
www.linkedin.com/in/kolusu

Mike Chantrey · Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2004 9:22 am Post subject:

I found a freeware TN3270 application at this location: http://www.ncn.com/nwmall/software/telnet.html

I had a look at the docs and it's quite old and unsupported and hasn't been tested on recent versions of windows. But as it ran happily under a number of older OS's - windows 3.1, NT 3.1, OS/2 2.1 and various others I would think there was a reasonable chance it could run under current windows versions. If not you could search for a more recent freeware version (I googled for TN3270 freeware).

Manas Biswal · Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2004 4:20 pm Post subject:

Hi Mike - I tried having some fun with TSO as you had mentioned in your first post. Smile

I entered EDIT on the READY prompt and it asked me for the dataset name. I entered the same. It then asked me for the DATASET TYPE. What does that mean. Does it mean the DS ORG. I tried entering PS or PO. But it always gave an invalid entry error.

Regards,
Manas

Mervyn · Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2004 7:25 pm Post subject:

Hi, Manas,

You asked for it! Try this:

http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/IKJ4C520/1.13?SHELF=&DT=20020111131759&FS=FALSE
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The day you stop learning the dinosaur becomes extinct

Mike · Posted: Wed Jan 21, 2004 4:23 pm Post subject:

Manas,
the datasetype is used to specify they type of data that you wish to edit rather than being the DSORG. It's ISPF equivalent would be dataset profiles. To be honest I don't think I've ever used anything but DATA. But there are quite a few types that can be specified. As Mervyn said, check out the manual if you're interested, but prepare to be shocked out how outdated it is. However saying that the TSO Edit command has helped me out of sticky situations in the past.

P.S. Another useful thing to know is that you can invoke SDSF from native TSO, simply by typing SDSF at the ready prompt.
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Regards,
Mike.