Software in space - what mainframers can learn from space missions !

(4AP)

Stream: Virtual Room 4
Time: 14:00 - 15:00

Presentation

It's not rocket science is a phrase you often hear mainframers mention to each other in passing. This talk combines two of my passions, astronomy and space exploration and mainframes. From a perspective of what rocket scientists do with their hardware and software, in terms of testing, patching, simulating, disaster planning, networking, security, there are many things that mainframers can learn from. The focus of the talk is story telling six different space missions, Arian 5, Cassini Huygens, Mars Polar Lander, Mars Orbiter, New Horizons and Perseverance and how each of then worked through unique problems they encountered, before and during the missions. Each of these has a unique bearing on how software should be built, what mistakes to avoid, what lessons to learn, and what best practices should be applied more often. Participants at the talk will benefit from learning about the interesting other side of space missions that isn't often covered by the media who just focus on mission success, and by relating these to mainframe software I hope that folks will make changes to how they approach their day to day job of z/OS and z/Linux software development and system programming tasks.

Attachments

4AP Attachments

Speakers

Joe Winchester at IBM UK LTD.

Joe is a Senior Technical Staff Member in the IBM z Systems software group. He is a member of the Zowe open mainframe project working with customers and business partners to create an open source tooling platform for z/OS tools.