M&IS 34036

Large Systems Technology

Course Syllabus

Fall 2002

 

Class meeting:  BSA 205, Monday, 6:15 to 8:45 p.m.

Instructor: Douglas Druckenmiller

Office: A409

Office hours: 11:00 am – 1:30 pm MW

Phone: 330-672-1160

Email: ddrucken@kent.edu

Website: http://orion.kent.edu

  1. Purpose of the course. This course is intended to give Computer Information Systems majors and minors an understanding of contemporary issues of management of large information systems in organizations. Large Systems are by no means confined today to computing on mainframes. However, this is probably the only course in the program in which you will have the opportunity to write instructions to a mainframe processor so we will take advantage of it by some basic programming in ISPF and JCL within the IBM OS/390 system.
  2. AllState Information Systems Professionals. We will be working with several information systems professionals from the Great Lakes Data Center at Hudson. They will partner with me in this course as guest lecturers and/or consultants, bringing us state of the art knowledge on the technical details of large systems management. The Hudson Data Center manages the AllState information system for approximately half of the AllState agents in the country, as well as maintaining a number of corporate computing functions and giving support to the new AllState web site for online purchase of policies.
  3. Teams. Much of what happens in this course will take place through team activity. The class is divided into six teams. The team memberships will be strictly alphabetical. Any newcomers to the class will be inserted into the appropriate alphabetical group. Responsibility for team members -- beginning with first class meeting, collect phone numbers and e-mails -- rotate responsibility for each class for one team member to take notes in class for team members who miss the class and for review -- keep track of absent members and confer with instructor if it looks like there is going to be a problem about an absent member's part in your team presentation. The responsibility for this is yours, not mine.
  4. Team assignments -- each team will have two presentations to give to the class. The presentations will be a preliminary and a final report on a systems problem designed by AllState IS professionals. They will also critique your presentations. Grading criteria for these presentations are shown on this web site on the link to team presentations.
  5. Attendance. Attendance at any job you hold now or will hold in the future is not optional. The same thing goes for this class. Among other things, although I make a major effort to put helpful support materials on the web site for your JCL programming assignments, I will inevitably forget something, or run out of time, or have to make some changes. So at least a crucial ten percent of what you will need to know is probably always going to miss the website and will be presented by me only in class. We will have a no-fault attendance policy. There are only 13 class meetings, due to two holiday weeks. You may miss two classes with no penalty. Each additional class missed results in 4 points deducted from your final grade. No excuses are needed or accepted. The only exception would be something such as a prolonged illness, which will probably make it advisable for you to drop the class anyway. Attendance checks will be at random times throughout the class meeting times.
  6. Participating in team presentation. Failure to be present at your team's presentation will result in your loss of the points earned by the team for that assignment. 
  7. Course Materials.

a.      Trombetta, Michael and Finkelstein, Sue Carolyn. MVS JCL & Utilities, A Comprehensive Treatment. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Second Edition (or current edition). (ISBN 0-201-08318-3). While an old book, it is the only one around. You will learn JCL from this book. Since we only use it for a short while, you may wish to share a book with another student.

b.      On-line sources you may find useful for team assignments. Do not limit your search to these but go out and find anything useful that you can.

·         www.esj.com Enterprise Systems Journal . Click on Library, then go both to 2000-98 and the Search option.

·         http://www.nwfusion.com Network. Select White Papers, Reviews, Columnists, Features, This Week, News, The Edge

·         www.cisco.com Useful for info on their products only

·         www.3com.com Their products, plus News

·         www.network.com From StorageTek

·         www.ibm.com Select News and use Search option

·         http://www.internetwk.com Internet Week. Check the several links under Resources and also under Tech Web Sites.

·         http://news.cnet.com Select Enterprise Computing and One Week's News

·         http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news Select Internet, News, Reviews, IT in the Enterprise, links to IT Week under which see IT Week sections

·         http://www.information week.com Information Week. A very good source. You might be able to do most of your searches within their site. Also select Newsflash, Highlights, Back Issues, News, Tools.

·         www.altavista.com is one of the search engines that is particularly good for sources, for example, enter the search topic as "mainframes" and see how many useful entries you get.

(c) Journals in the library, bound volumes on second floor shelved alphabetically and current issues in first floor reading room. None of these are trade magazines and all of them are quite readable.

·        IEEE Network

·        IBM Systems Journal

·        Information Systems Management

·        Data Communications

·        Database

·        Data Base for Advances in Information Systems

·        Computer

(d) To be announced -- source materials may be supplied by our AllState guest lecturers.

8.      STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES: In accordance with University policy, if you have a documented disability and require accommodations to obtain equal access in this course, please contact the instructor at the beginning of the semester or when given an assignment for which an accommodation is required. Students with disabilities must verify their eligibility through the Office of Student Disability Services (SDS) in the Michael Schwartz Student Service Center (181 MSC) (672-3391).

9.      ENROLLMENT: It is the student's responsibility to ensure proper enrollment in classes. You are advised to review your official class schedule during the first two weeks of the semester to ensure proper enrollment. Should you determine an error in your class schedule, you have two weeks from the beginning of the semester to correct it with your advising office. If registration errors are not corrected by this date and you continue to attend and participate in classes for which you are not officially enrolled, you are advised that you will not receive a grade at the conclusion of the semester.

10.  Last day to drop an individual class. November 2 is the last date to drop an individual class without special permission. If you stop attending a class without officially dropping, the probable result will be a grade of F.

11.  CONDITIONS CONCERNING TESTS AND PROGRAMMING ASSIGNMENTS:

·         Except for documented and acceptable excuses, such as illness certified by a physician, there are no make-ups for tests. If you miss it, you miss those points for the course. With appropriate documentation, a make-up assignment of the instructor's choice will be provided. For one unexcused missed test, or for a low grade, you may substitute your grade on the optional final exam.

·         Programming assignments -- Assignments are due to the high speed printer in the library on the date shown in the course schedule. Instructions are contained in the programming assignments on submitting your program to the printer.

·         Grace period and late penalties. There will be a one week grace period during which I will accept late programming assignments, with a 10% penalty for each day late. After the grace period, assignments will be critiqued and corrections given for those assignments already submitted, so no further late assignments can be accepted for grading.

·         Deal with problems early -- if you have a problem, contact me immediately at my office phone or e-mail address and/or talk to the people at the university computer systems help desk.

·         Cheating -- any form of copying another student's work (except for team presentations, of course) will result in an immediate failing grade for that assignment, for all students involved.

12.   GRADE WEIGHTS:

ISPF Programming Assignment

5%

JCL Programming Assignment #1

10%

JCL Programming Assignment # 2

10%

3 Tests @ 15 points each

45%

First Team Presentation

10%

Final Team Presentation

20%

Optional Final Exam

Substitute for low grade or missed exam

13.  Academic complaints. University regulations, some of which are reprinted in your copy of the KSU telephone directory, govern many aspects of our classes, including academic complaints. Since as your instructor I also happen to be the chairman of my department, if you have a complaint of unfair treatment in this class with respect to your grade, your first obligation is to talk with your instructor, that is, me. If we cannot resolve the issue, then I will get the Dean's office to have a chairperson of another department function as the chair to whom you can take your complaint for a possible grievance hearing.

14.  Schedule.  The following schedule is preliminary and may change due to unforeseen circumstances.  An updated copy will be kept on the course website.

 

Proposed Class schedule

 

Date

Topic

Reading

Assignment

1

8/26

Intro to course.

Intro to ISPF, JCL and Unix.

Create data set in MVS

JCL program to input data stream, Unix script

T & F,

Chs. 1 & 2

 

Form Teams

LAB -- Create data set in MVS

JCL program to input data stream

 

9/2

Labor day vacation

 

No class

2

9/9

Creating sequential disk data sets

T & F, ch. 3

 

LAB

ISPF assignment

Creating sequential disk data sets

3

9/16

Processing sequential data sets

T & F, ch. 4 to page 110

 

LAB

Processing sequential data sets

4

9/23

Working with Libraries

 

T & F, ch.5 thru page 154.

LAB

Working with Libraries

5

9/30

EXAM 1

 

LAB as needed

EXAM 1

6

10/7

Large systems & networks

Large systems & database administration

 

 

7

10/14

Hardware

ESM

 

JCL Assignment #1

8

10/21

Tour of AllState Computing Systems

 

 

9

10/28

First reports,

Teams 1, 2, 3

Teams 4,5,6

20 min

 

10

11/4

EXAM 2

 Exam 2 covers all materials from weeks 6, 7, 8, and 9

EXAM 2

 

11/11

Veterans’ Day

 

No class

11

11/18

Final reports,

Teams 1, 2, and 6

 

 

12

11/25

Final reports,

Teams 3, 4 and 5

 

 

13

12/2

EXAM 3

 Exam 3 will cover all the presentations from weeks 11 and 12, and some review of materials from exam 2.

EXAM 3

 

JCL assignment #2

14

Week of 12/09

Finals week

 

Optional final exam