Here are brief descriptions of some of the terms that I
use on some of my web pages.
web site. Open Source rulz!
Application Programming Interface.
American National Standard Code for Information Interchange.
Most computers use this standard for characters except
IBM mainframes. Newer operating systems like Windows NT
and computer languages like Java use a new coding
standard called UNICODE.
Extended Binary-Coded Decimal Interchange Code. IBM Mainframes
use this character representation. For some EBCDIC links, see
my EBCDIC links page.
An operating system that runs on IBM and IBM-compatible
mainframes. MVS stands for Multiple Virtual Storage. IBM has
recently renamed MVS to OS/390 but I use MVS generically to
refer to both. Since mainframes are often refered to as
I have chosen the T.rex as my web site mascot:
Once upon a time, there was an operating system called OS/360
that evolved into MFT, MVT, MVS, MVS/SP, MVS/XA and MVS/ESA.
It now has the catchy name of OS/390 and all is well. Okay
I left out DOS, PCP and other variations but this is a
nice bedtime story.
HyperText Markup Language. World Wide Web pages are currently
programmed in this language. Use the View Source option of your
web browser to see the source of this web page.
A scripting language that runs on most computer platforms but
only comes standard on IBM operating systems. REXX is very easy
to learn and very powerful. It is usually interpreted.
System/390 is computer platform that has evolved from the
made by IBM. There are other firms that make S/390
compatiable mainframes such as
Time Sharing Option. An online system primarily used for program
development on a MVS mainframe system. Business applications
usually use other MVS online systems like CICS or IMS.
I use TSO generically to refer to TSO and TSO/E. TSO/E, an
enhanced version of TSO, (and the only one still available) was
the first version of TSO that had support for REXX.
Short for TRANSMIT, is a TSO command that allows datasets
to be transfered using NJE on MVS mainframes. Datasets can
also be sent to users on the same system. Only sequential
XMIT'd files can be read by a VM system.
When the XMIT command is used with the OUTDATASET()
operand, a very useful portable version of a partitioned
dataset can be created. This type of dataset has a record
length of 80 with special headers and trailers around an
IEBCOPY sequential backup of the partitioned dataset.
The TSO RECEIVE command is used to obtain the XMIT file
which may be on DASD (when created with the OUTDATASET()
option) or reside on the JES SPOOL.
My first exposure to using XMIT and RECEIVE was for sharing
datasets on the same MVS system where security rules prevented
access between personal user datasets. If you wanted someone
else to access a dataset of yours, you would simply XMIT him
A compressed file that is in a special format. Programs that
create and uncompress ZIP files run on most platforms including
MVS mainframes. The most common usage of ZIP files is on IBM
and IBM compatible PCs.
Info-ZIP is the official zip program of the
Let me know if you think I should include more terms here.
I'm glad you came to Terms with me. Sorry
I couldn't resist!
See Pete Davis's small
I recommend a fun book with many computer terms: THE NEW HACKER'S
DICTIONARY edited by Eric Raymond. ISBN 0-262-68069-6.
Need an acronym explained, I bet it's one of the 47,000 found
at the Acronym Finder.
Last Updated: 2000-05-11
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