Amdahl UK’s Education Programme, previously under the aegis of Amdahl Europe, is now housed at Heathrow, in the spanking new premises of Axis House. The company has invested over UKP200,000 in equipping and fitting the centre, and offers a broad curriculum that covers the IBM Marketplace, MVS, VM/XA, CICS, DB2, IMS, VSAM, TPF, Communications, UTS, and Capacity Management. The number of students on each course never exceeds 16, and the students are taught by subject matter experts either in workshops or discussion groups. The IBM Marketplace is a one-day seminar providing an overview of hardware and software within the IBM environment. The MVS course covers MVS/XA and MVS/ESA, and Amdahl says that particular emphasis will be placed on the latter in view of increasing usage by customers. VM/XA courses are designed for newcomers and those already familiar with VM/SP and HPO. The former tackles concepts and facilities, planning and migration, installation, and the structure and flow. The CICS course is designed and delivered by On-Line Software International Inc instructors and divided into two sections, applications and systems. Applications include CICS/VS concepts, programming, design, testing, and debugging. The systems curriculum addresses CICS/VS concepts, internals, performance and tuning, recovery and restart, MRO/ISC, systems logic and debugging, and CICS/MVS 2.1XRF. On-Line Software also provides the DB2 course, and it covers relational concepts, application and management programming, database and application design, system administration, SQL, and query management facility. The IMS/VS DC programming course is intended for application programmers and systems analysts who design and code in that environment. It tackles structure and flow, message processing programs, systems considerations, screen design, message format services, batch terminal simulator, batch message programs, conversational programs, application performance, and multi-system coupling. The duration of the courses range from one to 10 day seminars, and they start at UKP225 for the IBM Marketplace, rising to UKP1,900 for the more arcane TPF structure and flow.
