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EXEC I/O

This blog is a discussion of what's new, stimulating and of general interest to the mainframe community.

TLA

 

Today I feel like an abbreviated rant. About ambiguity for the sake of brevity.

 

What do SMS, SMP and TSO have in common? They're all ambiguous mainframe TLA's!

 

What's a TLA? Why a Three-Letter Acronym of course! That is, unless you wish to point out that it's not an acronym if it doesn't form a word, in which case it's a Three-Letter Abbreviation. In other words, even TLA itself has a somewhat ambiguous meaning.

 

Then there are ETLA's - Extended TLA's, or Four-Letter Acronyms/Abbreviations.

 

I blame JFK, LBJ and the lot of them for the initial steps down this path. But whether or not it's really their faults, the fact is that we've discovered a real affinity for these brief referents (heck, even my parents chose my initials - RWH - before choosing my first and middle names).

 

So, what's the problem? Ambiguity.

 

Take SMS, for example - System-Managed Storage on the mainframe, Short Message Service on your cell phone.

 

Or SMP - aka SMP/E on the mainframe, the primary way we install and maintain software. In the distributed world, it stands for Symmetric Multi-Processing. To make it even weirder, I recently heard Parallel Sysplexes being referred to as SMP environments... referring to the second of these meanings!

 

Even CA isn't immune to this - we have an internal Technical Sales Organization which is called TSO. I've recommended we call the mainframe portion of it "TSO/E".

 

So, what are we going to do about it? IDK (LOL) I guess I'm just going to rant and then put up with it... RU2?

 

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About Reg Harbeck

Reg Harbeck is CA's Product Management Director for Mainframe Strategy. In the two decades since he received his Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science he has worked with operating systems, networks, security and applications on mainframes, UNIX, Linux, Windows and other platforms. Reg has been with CA for about ten years, during which time he has met with and presented to IT management and technical audiences in Europe, the Middle East and many locations across North America, including at Gartner, IBM zSeries, CMG, SHARE and CA World user conferences. Reg is the published author of several whitepapers and articles which are available online.
 
 
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