Forgotten Voice

This was a fore-runner to a product call IBM Information Access which gave customers access to the retain database and PTFs.

Basically it was some code which was added to MVS and ran some analyses when MVS Dumps were created. It automatically sent the diagnostics back to a server, which then directed the problem to a component specific developer. The developer could then run further scripts to send back relevant parts of the dump.

I ran the European side of things, but firstly I had to homologate (get authorised with BT) autocall in the UK. There was a slight problem in that I needed to modify the code for the UK. However the latest source code had gone AWOL. Life never changes. They had a version of the source which was somewhat out date. It was written in PLS and fortunately the PLS compiler was very consistent on the assembler code it generated. So by trial and error I was able to reconstitute the source by doing 'diffs' on the compiled assembler code to the code I had been given. The americans were a bit taken aback when I sent them their missing source code, to the extent they offered me an assignment in Poughkeepsie to continue work on RESS in the Data Processing Marketing Group (DPMG).

I worked with a great team of guys under a chap called Bob Bennett. We were all ace programmers having fun on this research product. In parallel there was another team developing the customer product. That team got into trouble and we were forced into helping out. We were given the telecommunications component of this new product. We coded it up in a couple of weeks and the Monday morning meeting was deciding how much code to report into the system while we continued with our research work.

The customer product had to interface with the retain and PTF databases. There were seven different departments in field engineering we had to interface with. When the project got into further trouble, our VP called a meeting and invited the other seven. Only one FE representative turned up. Our VP sent out a second invite which read “Either appear at this meeting or send your death certificate”. I ended up running the early support program for the product. At one of the customer meetings I was given some very gratifying feedback. The customer said this was the first IBM product whose version 1 was actually very useful.