SIM2000 Date & Time Simulator for VSE & zOS

SIM2000 - Date and Time Simulation Tool for zOS, OS/390, MVS, VSE

SIM2000 is a complete date & time simulator for OS/390,MVS, and VSE users. The need for time and date didn't cease with the arrival of the dread Y2K. SIM2000 works in both test and production environments to make it possible to tell all or some of your work that the date or time is different from what the CPU thinks it is.

Why you need a date and time simulator

A few of the reasons to give your applications a date facility include:-

Give remote users local time and date rather than the time at the data center - increasingly important for outsourced data centers
Test for unusual dates - 29th February, month-end falling on a public holiday Year-end, month end and end of accounting cycle testing
Test for unusual times - CICS transactions and batch jobs that run over midnight
Production re-runs - ensure a job re-run at 7 a.m. gives the same results as if it had run successfully at 9 p.m.
Production consistency - ensure overnight production doesn't suddenly change date in mid-stream
Disaster recovery - run last week's work at the same time as running this week's work
Transaction synchronization for online systems - display the correct local date and time on terminals on the other side of the country or the other side of the world
Make sure your "date windowing" code will work - not wishing to get you panicking but the 2010 date a lot of comanies chose is not far off.
Thinking ahead, the hardware TOD clock rolls over just before midnight on September 17th, 2042 - SIM2000 will help you handle it.

SIM2000 lets you test batch and CICS applications in your normal environment without disrupting critical production and development work. SIM2000 can be started and stopped at any time without an IPL or recycling of CICS . System auditors love it as a way of auditing correct program operation.

SIM2000 Date / time testing in batch

SIM2000 simulation in a batch environment lets you set a date for a specific partition or region. Every program running in that partition or region sees the simulated date. SIM2000 batch allows you to set the date for:

The duration of the executing program (EXEC step)
The duration of the entire job (JOB)
Specific or generic job names, program names, userids
All programs executing in a specific VSE dynamic class

SIM2000 lets you disable or change date simulation at any time.

SIM2000 Date / time testing under CICS

SIM2000 CICS allows date & time simulation at program and transaction level in any active CICS. Its menu driven transaction lets you set up the SIM2000 CICS testing environment. SIM2000 CICS will allow you to simulate dates and times at the:

Program level (CICS PPT,CICS program)

Transaction level (CICS PCT, CICS transaction/task)

Terminal level (CICS TCT, CICS terminal)

Any combination of the above levels

SIM2000 CICS supports both command and macro level programs, and any programming language supported by CICS.

SIM2000 STCK Instruction Simulation

SIM2000 STCK instruction simulation lets programs that use the STCK instruction to obtain the current date and time, to see the "fake" date. It works in a all batch and online environments.

SIM2000/DB2 & SIM2000/IMS

SIM2000/DB2 lets DB2 users test DB2 application programs with a "fake" date. SIM2000/IMS provides the same services for IMS users.

SIM2000 Program Analyzer

The SIM2000 Program Analyzer identifies which executable programs contain date handling code. The SIM2000 Program Analyzer is a batch program that analyzes executable programs contained in zOS loadlibs and VSE libraries.

The SIM2000 Program Analyzer will identify the programs that use any or all of the following date and time facilities:

Store Clock instruction - STCK

Cobol CURRENT-DATE usage

VSE GETIME services

zOS TIME service

SIM2000 is available worldwide from Cobbs Mill Consulting or in Australia and New Zealand from Generic Systems