Powered by Rexx? Do not be surprised if you see more of these in years to come. In the land where once ruled Perl, Tcl, Python and other server-side scripting languages, the landscape has changed. In the world of large servers, Solaris, HP-UX and UTS, move on, make some space, OS390 is coming.

• Perl ? Tcl ? Python ?

  What is common among all these server side, scripting languages ? They are more or less popular especially among the UNIX developer community and web site administrators. All of these very powerful tools are not easy to learn, but easy to copy and modify enough to do some basic tasks, like mail forms and access counters. They are tightly integrated with UNIX operating system but with limited support for large scale database access. CGI scripts are not multi-threaded, therefore performance and scalability are known issues.

• Java servlets ?

  New kid on the block comes from Java shops in a form of Java servlets. Applets that run within a web server. Main characteristic is that Java servlets are platform independent and provide for multi threading. They also provide database connectivity through JDBC. They are web server dependent and their performance and scalability are still to be proven. Java is still a new and non-native environment. Java is platform independent and because of that does not integrate easily with underlying operating system.

• Other proprietary server-side scripting languages

  Each vendor has their own set of tools that integrate their products with the outside world. Some examples are ORACLE's PL/SQL and LutuScript. These tools are proprietary, vendor and platform dependent. They are geared toward integration of single-vendor line of products and can be very hard to deploy and use enterprise wide.

• OS390 Unix Services

  Eating the cake and having it too ? Yes, with OS390 UNIX services you can take the advantage of S390 platform and architecture and at the same time reuse the knowledge base and strengths of UNIX.

Mainframes are not dead. We finally realized that processing power, reliability, availability and security of the mainframe should be used in a new way. So, the mainframe Rexx survived as well, but the process changed its nature. For the better. It just went through the metamorphosis from an obscure, system programmers’ magic tool to main stream, mainframe-server, scripting powerhouse.

• Performance
• Reliability
• Availability
• Security

  There is really no need to explain these pillars of S390 success. S390 provides unparalleled performance that is still unmatched by other vendors. S390 provides stabile, predictable and tunable large scale environment. 99% of uptime is standard in S390 shops, not something that is being set as an optimistic objective year after year. S390 remains the environment that provides the most flexible, adequate level of security for all users and resources. It can be as secure as one needs it to be without affecting productivity.