INTRODUCTION TO MY 1988 SMP ARTICLE


      My article, which explains the basic concepts of SMP and SMP/E,
was written in 1988, and is still almost completely applicable today.
I'm going to show you, in a few pages, how to understand SMP/E.  Let's
first just say a few vitriolic, but true, introductory words.

      IBM has a habit of "only touting its latest stuff".  They tell
us:  "Here's our product SMP/E, which helps you maintain your MVS
system!"  What they don't tell you are the concepts that are necessary
to grasp, so an intelligent person can get a basic understanding of
SMP/E ideas in a reasonable amount of time.

      In order to understand SMP/E, you have to understand where it
came from.  SMP/E came from an effort to automate and keep track of
the SYSGEN process, and how to put subsequent fixes on an already-
generated MVS operating system.  It is my fervent and passionate
belief, that if you don't understand the SYSGEN process, you'll never
have a clue to really understanding what SMP/E is all about.

      Problem:  We don't do SYSGENs any more today, to construct an
MVS system.  The reason is that IBM has done them for us, before they
shipped us the new system.  The information from their SYSGEN of our
system is buried in the JCLIN information, in the target SMP/E control
datasets, of the system that they ship us.

      Previously, we could not dig that information out.  Now we can.
In the newer SMP/E releases, after Release 1.3, there is an "un-JCLIN"
process in SMP/E, otherwise known as the GENERATE command.  Using
GENERATE, we can re-create assembly and link-edit information which
is buried in the SMP/E datasets--the same information, like the SYSGEN
information, that tells us how the pieces of our system were put
together in the first place.

      So, we begin our journey as I take you back in time--to a time
that IBM will never admit ever existed--to the (ancient) time when
SYSGENs were done, to build MVS systems.  We must go back there.
Because, if we don't ever go back there, we'll never have a clue to
understanding what IBM is selling us now--this nice, neat, clever,
intricate SMP/E product.

      This is the truth.  Isn't "official IBM" great?  They don't give
us what we need, because it's based on history, and they can't admit
that history exists, because they want to sell us their newest stuff!

      That's why we have USERS helping each other, and that's why I'm
helping you.  It took me 4 long years to learn what could have taken 3
weeks, with a decent explanation, that wasn't there.  Once I learned
the stuff, I vowed to provide the explanation too!

      So let's go learn about SMP/E from the beginning--the beginning
of time!