🚀 go-pugleaf

Hello,

This is my first posting on the internet.  I am an applications
programmer working for a mainframe applications software company. 
I have varied experience in the mainframe and unix environments; 
but am no way considered an expert on either.  Our company is
starting to look at the unix environment to enhance it's mainframe
products.  I am on a fact finding mission to deal with the
connectivity issues between a unix machine and a mainframe (VM/CMS,
MVS/CICS,...).  I've read some of IBM's brochures on the RS6000 and
their TCP/IP for the mainframe.  Well, I trust sales brochures just
about as much as I trust any of the Presidential candidates.  I
would like to get the scoop from you people, the experts, who have
actually connected the two machines and are working in a mixed
environment. 

I am not necessarily concerned about using an RS6000 or any
particular vendor's hardware.  I don't want to be locked into a
proprietary solution.  I would like to know however, real hardware
configurations (mainframe and unix), network hardware (tokenring,
eithernet, sneakerNet) and software (TCP, NFS, SNA, APPC, ?)
configurations,  and any other special software configurations.  

I am also interested in connectivity concepts; ways of sharing
data.   The way I see it, distributing data across a multi-machine
network can be categorized in three groups,  application packet
passing, full file transfer, & network packet passing.  Do you
argee with this or have I been smoking to much nuclear waste?

Application Packet Passing (client/server technology) -
     The application bundles its data and sends it to another
     application.  These two application use a specific protocol,
     i.e. APPC, NFS/RPC, TCP-SOCKETS.  

Full file transfer -
     FTP, TAPE, ?  Transferring the data files from one machine two
another.  

Network Packet Passing -
     NFS, ?  This is effectively like having a disk on another
     machine mounted to your local machine.  Your operating system
     thinks that this is a local disk.  This means that a program
     on one machine can perform data access to a file that is on
     another machine.  


I know this is a big subject.  If you can help out in any one or
all of these areas, I would greatly appreciate it.  

Thank you in advance,

John Casey