Re: OO and "mainframes"

William M. Klein wrote:

>What Chuck reports for the two Unisys systems closely resembles my *impress
ion*
>of what has happened in the IBM mainframe environments.  (z/OS "supports" O
O -
>but it isn't used much; while VM and VSE do not have OO support).
>
>Personally, I have never known how much this is a "chicken-and-the-egg" iss
ue.
>On workstations (particularly Windows) there are "extensive" (semi-)languag
e
>independent Class libraries - most notably for "GUI" development.  In fact,
 the
>most common (not only - but most common) way to do GUI's is via "OO" interf
aces.
>
>For mainframes (IBM and - according to my understanding of Chuck's comments
)
>there are NOT any "commonly used" class libraries (for any programming
>language).  Without off-the-shelf class libraries (and application needs th
at
>they meet) there doesn't seem to be "demand" for OO programming (or program
ming
>languages) - without common usage of OO programming, there isn't demand for
>off-the-shelf  class libraries.
>
>OBVIOUSLY, this is a "generalization" and there are some exceptions, but th
is
>does seem somewhat common to me.
>
>NOTE:
>  Even if J4/WG4 add "collection classes" *and* (although I doubt it will
>happen) mainframes offer such classes, I don't think this will (significant
ly)
>increase the use of OO on mainframes.  What needs to happen (for OO to "tak
e
>off") is for some vendor to provide OS-independent, Language-independent, c
lass
>libraries that actually MEET current application demand (for something othe
r
>than GUI interfaces).  As most mainframes already support MOST of the thing
s
>that applications need to do on mainframes, I don't see this happening (as 
I
>don't see good business cases for their development).
>
>If there were OO class libraries for
>   XML
>   SQL databases
>
>*maybe* these would be used on mainframes (and increase the use and demand 
for
>OO there) but without this, modular programming is viewed as meeting the
>"maintenance" issues that OO (purports to) solves and there simply is no ne
ed
>for old or new development using OO.
>
>
>
Agree with your comments. But *even* if all the *IFs* were in place  how
soon before installations would upgrade to the 'brightest and latest'.
From your Share knowledge - has there been a significant move to IBM
Enterprise - and I'm not talking OO ?

(It's rather ironic, Richard 'knocks' MS$ 'for being in charge' - isn't
that paralleled by Big Blue and all the nifty features they provide -
from a message well over a year ago - you don't even need to use COBOL
verbs to access COBOL files !).

Jimmy, Calgary AB