zOS, Oh zOS. Wherefore Goest Thou?

IBM Statements Of Direction

As part of the z/OS V1.8 announcement made on February 28, 2006 (Announcement Letter 206-039), IBM made some additions to its list of z/OS statements of direction. These statements of direction represent IBM plans about elimination or enhancement of z/OS function or elements, parts of z/OS that may be stabilized, and other useful planning information for z/OS migrations and exploiting z/OS capabilities. Here’s a synopsis of the new z/OS V1.8 statements of direction, and a compendium of recent statements of direction. For more on this z/OS announcement, see All statements regarding IBM's plans, directions, and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice.

z/OS V1.8 Statements of Direction.

The C/C++ prelinker – designed to process long names and to support constructed reentrancy for the MVS and OS/390 C compiler – will be stabilized without any further enhancement. Enhancements will be added to the binder (a part of the z/OS linkage editor). The binder includes a prelinker, linkage editor, loader, and several Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that operate against program objects. A high degree of compatibility exists between the prelinker and the binder, but the binder is the strategic facility of the future.

z/OS V1.8 will be the last release to support Advanced Program To Program (APPC) communications between the Hardware Configuration Management (HCM) and the Hardware Configuration Definition (HCD) z/OS elements. Future releases will only support TCP/IP communications.

z/OS V1.8 will be the last release to include the C/C++ IBM Open Class (IOC) Dynamic Link Libraries (DLLs). The development component of the IOC Library was removed in z/OS V1.5. z/OS run-time support will be removed in the next release or version of z/OS (available in 2007).

In a future release of z/OS, the in-stack version of the TN3270 Server will no longer be provided. A stand-alone version of the TN3270 Server has been provided starting with z/OS V1.6, and provides enhanced flexibility, reliability, and problem resolution capabilities than the in-stack version. Consequently, z/OS customers should plan on eliminating use of the in-stack TN3270 Server.

In a future release of z/OS, the RMF LDAP backend interface will be replaced with a Common Information Model (CIM) Monitoring interface. This CIM Monitoring interface was first provided in z/OS V1.7. Customers should make plans to implement this interface rather than the RMF LPAP interface. This facility is used by RMF to capture performance data from application programs.

IBM intends to enhance the z/OS IBM Encryption Facility Encryption Services feature to use the RFC 2440 OpenPGP standard. This will provide functional compatibility between internal or external entities that also use RFC-2440 compliant clients. Additional details will be announced later.

Earlier, Key Statements of Direction (this list does not include statements of direction that have already been fulfilled).

July 6, 2005

IBM has the intention to develop and deliver a new z/OS management/operations user interface that will automate, simplify, or eliminate many of the tasks necessary to run a z/OS complex of systems. This interface will be delivered via a separate product in the fourth quarter 2005. (See Announcement Letter 205-329, IBM OMEGAMON z/OS Management Console V1.1 delivers real-time, health-check information, dated 12/13/2005 at

IBM will allow more than 32 LPARs in a single partition with good scalability on the z9-109.

IBM will provide a New Application License Charges (NALC) version that provides subcapacity pricing.

IBM will develop a new z/OS component called z/OS XML System Services that will provide high performance and extensive parsing.

The VSAM Java database connectivity (JDBC) Connector will not be delivered in 2005, but some time in the future.

As of June 2006, CBPDO orders will only include maintenance for products in the order, and Service-Only CBPDOs will no longer be available. IBM recommends using SMP/E Internet Service Retrieval effective immediately (see SMP/E announcement 205-170, at

As of September 2006, ESO and CBPDO physical delivery subscriptions are void.

IBM Communication Controller for Linux will provide CDLC on OSA-Express2, data-link switching (DLSw), and an open X.25 interface.

All msys for Setup plug-ins except DB2 V8 will be withdrawn in z/OS V1.8.

z/OS V1.7 will be the last release to support msys for Operations.

February 15, 2005

z/OS V1.7 will be the last release to support:

  • Mounting zFS multi-file system aggregate file systems in a sysplex.
  • Integrated Security Services Firewall Technologies.
  • The TCP/IP ASSORTEDPARMS, ENDASSORTEDPARMS, KEEPALIVEOPTIONS, ENDKEEPALIVEOPTIONS statements.
  • SNMP V1 MIB and PAGTSNMP subagent.
  • Defining parallel Enterprise Extended TGs with multiple SAP addresses.
  • AnyNet.
  • 1-byte Console IDs.

The S/390 Service Update Facility is withdrawn as of 1/15/2006.

zFS multi-file system aggregates will be removed from a future z/OS release.

For earlier Statements of Direction, or more detail on the above SODs, see

1