| Company / developer | IBM |
|---|---|
| OS family | DOS/360 and successors |
| Working state | Current |
| Source model | Closed source |
| Latest stable release | IBM z/VSE V4.3 / November 26, 2010 |
| Marketing target | IBM mainframe computers |
| License | Proprietary |
| Official website | z/VSE |
| History of IBM mainframe operating systems |
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On early mainframe computers: On S/360 and successors: |
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z/VSE (Virtual Storage Extended) is an operating system for IBM mainframe computers, the latest one in the DOS/360 lineage, which originated in 1965. It is less common than prominent z/OS and is mostly used on smaller machines. Primary z/VSE development occurs in IBM's Böblingen labs in Germany.
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DOS/360 originally supported 24-bit addressing. As the underlying hardware evolved, VSE/ESA acquired support for 31-bit addressing. IBM released z/VSE Version 4 in 2007. z/VSE Version 4 requires 64-bit z/Architecture hardware and supports 64-bit real mode addressing. The latest shipping release (as of November 2011) is z/VSE 5.1.
IBM recommends that z/VSE customers run Linux on zSeries alongside, on the same physical system, to provide another 64-bit application environment that can access and extend z/VSE applications and data via Hipersockets using a wide variety of middleware. CICS, one of the most popular enterprise transaction processing systems, is extremely popular among z/VSE users and now supports recent innovations such as Web services. DB2 is also available and popular.
Job Control Language (JCL) is z/VSE's batch processing interface. There is also another, special interface for system console operators. z/VSE, like z/OS systems, had traditionally supported 3270 terminal user interfaces. However, most z/VSE installations have at least begun to add Web browser access to z/VSE applications. z/VSE's TCP/IP is a separately priced option for historic reasons, and is available in two different versions from two vendors.
Since z/VSE 3.1, Fibre Channel access to storage devices is supported, although only on IBM's Enterprise Storage Server (ESS) and its successors. z/VSE 3.1 is still compatible with 31-bit mainframes, as opposed to z/VSE 4. This version was supported to 2009.[1]
A previous generation, VSE/ESA 2.7, is no longer supported since February 28, 2007.[1]