MAINFRAME REXX TUTORIAL PDF
Repetitive tasks which are tedious, and require manual labour can be automated using Rexx. Just like you use the FIND, CHANGE, SAVE. If you are developing or maintaining the traditional mainframe . To run the tutorials on this blog, you will need access to an IBM mainframe. The REXX Tutorial. Contents. Introductory text; 1. Creating a Rexx program; 2. Doing arithmetic; 3. Errors; 4. Untyped data; 5. More on variables; 6. Functions; 7.
An informal way to understand the concepts of REXX programming language.
You will find easy to understand tutorials and lessons for REXX here. This is my first visit to your tytorial, your post made productive reading, thank you. Informative article, just what I was looking for. If you are developing or maintaining the traditional mainframe based applications, you would have heard of programming language called REXX Restructured EXtended eXecutor Language.
You may not have had chance to learn it simply because the application was mainly written in COBOL and that was your primary focus. And, most of the training programs, either external or corporate, do not teach REXX as a language in their initial mainframe training.
IBM Systems Magazine – A Beginner’s Guide to the REXX Programming Language on z/OS
If you are not able to locate good resources to learn it, then it is not your fault. This blog is an effort to make learning REXX easier.
You will find easy to understand informal lessons that will clear the concepts and make your understanding of REXX easier. There are various components of BCP, that provide various services to the mainframe users. The first service that a typical user uses is TSO Time sharing option. This is the service through which the user logs into the mainframe. This is the service that provides various options to perform the tasks on mainframe, right from editing new programs, compiling programs, checking the output in spool, allocate datasets, and so on.
Other option is to traverse the ISPF options to reach the panel that has the allocate option.
Mainframe REXX made easy: Introduction to Mainframe REXX
Essentially, everything that you do on a mainframe is a command. This means that you need to manually perform all the routine tasks.
If you perform lots of repetitive tasks on mainframe, it tutoril be time consuming and an inefficient way of doing it. REXX provides a way by which you can automate all your routine tasks.
Learning the REXX Language
It does this either through a simple program or by using other ISPF facilities like Panels, Skeletons more about them later. It is a programming language. So, by just writing 4 lines of code, you achieve your purpose. If you need to find out all the datasets that meet some pattern and see if they have some data in it, you can do a 3.
Imagine, how much time it will take if there are hundreds of datasets matching that pattern and if you have to do it daily, it will be simply boring. Instead, you can write a simple rexx program not exceeding 20 lines and you will get your result. The examples can get increasingly complex and you see how much time you can save by automating such tasks. The other benefit is make the tasks interesting instead of boring, manual and repetitive. To allocate a dataset using TSO, you give the command.
A Beginner’s Guide to the REXX Programming Language on z/OS
And, the same for any other service available on mainframe. However, traditionally their uses are well defined. It is used to develop utilities that will reduce time taken to manually perform an operation. There will always be exception to the above classification, but generally that is the norm. It is a free format language.
This means there is no fixed structure to a rexx program. Lots of built-in functions. It provides a lot of functions to do string manipulations, number functions, Parsing mxinframe in addition to the functions provided by ISPF and other services.
REXX is an interpreted language. A compiler is also available. But, most of the programs out there are interpreted.