VSE
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- This page is about the VSE operating system. For other uses see VSE (disambiguation).
VSE (Virtual Storage Extended) is an operating system for IBM mainframe computers. Primary development occurs in IBM's Böblingen, Germany, labs. It is less common than z/OS and is mostly used on smaller machines. It is the successor to DOS/VSE which in turn followed DOS/360. Thus, VSE traces its roots back to the mid-1960s System/360.
VSE originally supported 24-bit addressing. As the underlying hardware evolved, VSE acquired support for 31-bit addressing. IBM announced z/VSE Version 4 with expected availability in 2006. z/VSE Version 4 will better exploit z/Architecture's 64-bit design.
IBM still recommends that VSE customers run Linux on zSeries alongside, on the same physical system, to provide another 64-bit application environment that can access and extend VSE applications and data via Hipersockets using a wide variety of middleware.
JCS (Job Control Statements) are VSE's batch processing interfaces. There is also a special interface used by system console operators. CICS, one of the most popular enterprise transaction processing systems, is extremely popular among VSE users and now supports recent innovations such as Web services. DB2 is also available and popular.
VSE, like z/OS systems, has traditionally supported 3270 terminal user interfaces. However, most VSE users have at least begun to add Web browser access to VSE applications. VSE's TCP/IP is a separately priced option for historic reasons and is available in two different versions from two vendors, including through IBM sales. Most VSE sites do add TCP/IP.
VSE celebrated its 41st birthday in March, 2006. The latest shipping release (as of June, 2006) is z/VSE 3.1. z/VSE 3.1 added support for more affordable SCSI storage devices. z/VSE 3.1 is still compatible with 31-bit mainframes and does not require a z/Architecture server, but z/VSE Version 4 will require a 64-bit mainframe.
