Java on a Mainframe?

[Barry Burd]

I just got a request to teach Java on a Mainframe. The client thinks
that Java on a mainframe is very different from Java on a desktop
computer. To the best of my knowledge, this isn't true. Can anyone
confirm or deny this claim (or provide any details)? Thanks.

 

[Joona I Palaste]

I just got a request to teach Java on a Mainframe. The client thinks
that Java on a mainframe is very different from Java on a desktop
computer. To the best of my knowledge, this isn't true. Can anyone
confirm or deny this claim (or provide any details)? Thanks.

It all depends on the brand and the model of the mainframe. If it's a
brand-new Sun Fire 15K, you'll have no problems at all. If it's an
IBM 360 from the 1960s or something, you'd better forget the whole thing.

--
/-- Joona Palaste ([email protected]) ------------- Finland --------\
\-- http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste --------------------- rules! --------/
"And according to Occam's Toothbrush, we only need to optimise the most frequent
instructions."
- Teemu Kerola

 

[Christophe Vanfleteren]

I just got a request to teach Java on a Mainframe. The client thinks
that Java on a mainframe is very different from Java on a desktop
computer. To the best of my knowledge, this isn't true. Can anyone
confirm or deny this claim (or provide any details)? Thanks.

The basics are exactly the same, except you'll probably be using other api's
for your app on the mainframe compared to the app on the desktop (eg. J2EE
vs. J2SE), because your mainframe app. will probably do other, more
enterprise-oriented things.

 

[Roedy Green]

It all depends on the brand and the model of the mainframe. If it's a
brand-new Sun Fire 15K, you'll have no problems at all. If it's an
IBM 360 from the 1960s or something, you'd better forget the whole thing.

Java is Java. The only thing that makes it different is which version
is supported. An old 360 from the 1960s won't have sufficient RAM,
but their descendants certainly do.

 

[Harald Hein]

I just got a request to teach Java on a Mainframe. The client thinks
that Java on a mainframe is very different from Java on a desktop
computer. To the best of my knowledge, this isn't true. Can anyone
confirm or deny this claim (or provide any details)? Thanks.

Sounds more as if someone is mixing up J2SE and J2EE. If this is the
case, yes, J2EE is much more than J2SE.

 

[Gerald Kelly]

I just got a request to teach Java on a Mainframe. The client thinks
that Java on a mainframe is very different from Java on a desktop
computer. To the best of my knowledge, this isn't true. Can anyone
confirm or deny this claim (or provide any details)? Thanks.

I've worked with Java on the IBM S/390. It's an IBM JDK/JVM, so it
may run a little behind the Sun versions, but otherwise it's pretty
much the same. See
http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/zseries/software/java/basics.html

 

[Michael Borgwardt]

Sounds more as if someone is mixing up J2SE and J2EE. If this is the
case, yes, J2EE is much more than J2SE.

But of course, J2EE is in no way specific to mainframes.

 

[Dale King]

It all depends on the brand and the model of the mainframe. If it's a
brand-new Sun Fire 15K, you'll have no problems at all. If it's an
IBM 360 from the 1960s or something, you'd better forget the whole thing.

I'm not sure about 360, but IBM does have a JVM for System/390:

http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/zseries/software/java/

One thing that can be an issue there is that the platform default character
encoding is EBCDIC based, not ASCII-based so you need to be cognizant of
that.