SIM-Date Date & Time Simulator for VSE & MVS

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

SIM-Date is a comprehensive date & time simulator for OS/390,MVS, and VSE users. Developed from the highly successful SIM2000 date simulator, SIM-Date works in both testing and production environments to make it possible to tell all or part of your workload that the date or time is different from what the CPU thinks it is.

The need for date and time simulation for both production and testing did not stop with the run-up to Y2K: neither did it start there. Many data centers gave themselves the expensive luxury of a separate virtual or real machine or separate LPARs for Y2K testing but most of those have now disappeared.

A few of the reasons for providing your organization with a date and time simulator include:-

Testing for unusual dates - 29th February, month-end falling on a public holiday Year-end, month end and end of accounting cycle testing
Testing for unusual times - CICS transactions and batch jobs that run over midnight
Production re-runs - ensuring that a job re-run at 7 a.m. gives the same results as it would if it had run successfully at 9 p.m.
Production consistency - ensuring that production that runs overnight doesn't suddenly change date in mid-stream
Disaster recovery - being able to 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
If you used "date windowing" as a way to circumvent putting 4 digit dates in your files, you can use SIM-Date to test that your date window can be advanced when the time comes.
Not wishing to start a panic but the hardware TOD clock will rollover to zero just before midnight on September 17th, 2042 - SIM-Date will help you handle it.

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

SIM-Date Batch

SIM-Date simulation in a batch environment lets you set a date for a specific partition or region. Every program running in that partition or region will see the SIM-Date date. SIM-Date 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

SIM-Date lets you disable or change date simulation at any time.

SIM-Date CICS

SIM-Date CICS allows date & time simulation in any active CICS at the program and transaction level. SIM-Date CICS's menu driven transaction lets you set up the SIM-Date CICS testing environment. SIM-Date 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

SIM-Date CICS supports both command and macro level programs, and any programming language supported by CICS.

SIM-Date STCK Instruction Simulation

SIM-Date 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.

SIM-Date/DB2 & SIM-Date/IMS

SIM-Date/DB2 lets MVS DB2 users test their DB2 application programs with a "fake" date. SIM-Date/IMS provides the same services for IMS users.

SIM-Date Program Analyzer

The SIM-Date Program Analyzerlets you identify which executable programs contain date handling code. The SIM-Date Program Analyzer is a batch program that analyzes executable programs contained in MVS loadlibs and VSE libraries.

The SIM-Date 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

MVS TIME service

SIM-Date is available worldwide from CobbsMill Consulting or in Australia and New Zealand from Generic Systems