Just been reading this . . .

First time I've noticed this group.

There seems to be a lot of talk about mainframe COBOL people being hard to
find. What nonsense.

I've been out of  IT for about four years and would like to get back in,
I've sent my resume off to a few places and get varied responses from them.
I can understand their point of view in that , yes I have been out of it for
a while, but to convince these people of your employability is another thing
entirely.

I'm rusty,  yes, and I don't have access to a mainframe, there is a place in
India offering a 3270 emulator but contacting these people is a nightmare.
Short of paying $800 or more to do a CICS course (as much to get back on a
3270 as to learn something I never used and might be useful), I see few
options but trying to obtain an emulator to raise my skills level.

I've been reading old texts books and such but it's not the same, I know
within a w or so my skills will be up to scratch. I worked in banking for
five years and also used Hogan for the debit/credit card application I was
working on.

I have a degree in comp. sci. and also a cisco certificate, but no one seems
to want to know.  COBOL for me is something I'm not likely to ever forget,
nor JCL, VSAM, ISPF, Expediter and Fileaid, I also worked with PL/1 for a
year and DB2, well the SQL and COBOL programmer's use of it,. I could get my
head around it all again pretty quickly, binding etc, cursors, no probs. I
was also pretty handy with Control-M and writing job schedules.

I'd gladly take a job offering $60K Aus here or anywhere.

Does anyone know of any international recruitment agencies for COBOL
programmers?
It seems Australia doesn't seem to want my skills while they can farm work
off to India, and from my experience, it usually needs reworking when it
comes back.

TIA.

"Old cobol hack" <och@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:4ej726F1eglroU1@individual.net...
> First time I've noticed this group.
>
<snip>
> I'm rusty,  yes, and I don't have access to a mainframe, there is a place
> in India offering a 3270 emulator but contacting these people is a
> nightmare. Short of paying $800 or more to do a CICS course (as much to
> get back on a 3270 as to learn something I never used and might be
> useful), I see few options but trying to obtain an emulator to raise my
> skills level.
>
see http://www.murach.com/books/mccp/index.htm and

http://www.murach.com/books/cdrf/index.htm

for two books on CICS. They are a little dated by now but you can easily
learn the basics. It can be hard to get practice writing CICS programs
because many if not most places require a systems programmer to update some
tables before you are able to run and test your programs.

Old cobol hack wrote:
> First time I've noticed this group.
>
> There seems to be a lot of talk about mainframe COBOL people being hard to
> find. What nonsense.
>
> I've been out of  IT for about four years and would like to get back in,
> I've sent my resume off to a few places and get varied responses from them
.
> I can understand their point of view in that , yes I have been out of it f
or
> a while, but to convince these people of your employability is another thi
ng
> entirely.
>
> I'm rusty,  yes, and I don't have access to a mainframe, there is a place 
in
> India offering a 3270 emulator but contacting these people is a nightmare.
> Short of paying $800 or more to do a CICS course (as much to get back on a
> 3270 as to learn something I never used and might be useful), I see few
> options but trying to obtain an emulator to raise my skills level.
>

You could try downloading the free Fujitsu Cobol compiler from
www.adtools.com. It is Cobol I and II compatible and comes with
PowerCobol (pseudo OO). Unfortunately, IIRC, the SQL side has been
disabled so you won't be able to revise DB2 and cursors...

Also, there are IBM Assembler tools (PC/370 and z/390). PC/370 is a
freebie dating from about 1984 and can be downloaded off of the net.
z/390 is a java implementation  and is owned by www.z390.org. You can
download it from
http://www.automatedsoftwaretools.c...oad_Archive.htm
for free.

Old cobol hack wrote:
> First time I've noticed this group.
>
> There seems to be a lot of talk about mainframe COBOL people being hard to
> find. What nonsense.
>
> I've been out of  IT for about four years and would like to get back in,
> I've sent my resume off to a few places and get varied responses from them.[/color
]

Have you tried the Aussie branch of www.jobserve.com for job lists?

"Alistair" <alistair@ld50macca.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:1149597086.623782.184670@h76g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
> Old cobol hack wrote: 
>
> Have you tried the Aussie branch of www.jobserve.com for job lists?
>
No but I will look them up though, and thanks ! Funnily enough, I have
recently had a few replies for a couple of contracting positions I've
applied for, so fingers crossed I may get to the interview stage shortly. (I
sound like the boy who cried wolf !)

What I did find when I did a search on "fileaid", "ispf", "xpediter" was a
site that a has a few flash tutorials for many things  including  JCL,DB2,
IDCAMS, VSAM,CICS, COBOL, ENDEVOR, . . . pretty much the whole IBM
environment, complete with screen shots of panels with interactive stuff and
quizes. It was all sample stuff and introductions to their courses, but a
BIG help.

It's at www.datatrain.nl if anyone is interested.

"charles hottel" <jghottel@yahoo.com> wrote in message
 news:191b4$4484c3bf$4f9c64e$12075@DIALUP
USA.NET...
>
> "Old cobol hack" <och@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:4ej726F1eglroU1@individual.net... 
> <snip> 
> see http://www.murach.com/books/mccp/index.htm and
>
> http://www.murach.com/books/cdrf/index.htm
>
> for two books on CICS. They are a little dated by now but you can easily
> learn the basics. It can be hard to get practice writing CICS programs
> because many if not most places require a systems programmer to update
> some tables before you are able to run and test your programs.
Thanks Charles.

"Alistair" <alistair@ld50macca.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:1149597008.614961.176620@h76g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
> Old cobol hack wrote: 
>
> You could try downloading the free Fujitsu Cobol compiler from
> www.adtools.com. It is Cobol I and II compatible and comes with
> PowerCobol (pseudo OO). Unfortunately, IIRC, the SQL side has been
> disabled so you won't be able to revise DB2 and cursors...

I had a look, it comes with support for ODBC databases and I have Access and
Oracle8i which should suffice.
Cheers  Alistair!
>
> Also, there are IBM Assembler tools (PC/370 and z/390). PC/370 is a
> freebie dating from about 1984 and can be downloaded off of the net.
> z/390 is a java implementation  and is owned by www.z390.org. You can
> download it from
> http://www.automatedsoftwaretools.c...oad_Archive.htm
> for free.
>