Part 2: External Storage and File Processing

Chapters 25 through 29 of this textbook cover external storage, file processing, and parts of a number of operating systems. As indicated below, these chapters are copied almost verbatim from an earlier textbook by Mr. Peter Abel, who at the time of writing the book was a faculty member at the British Columbia Institute of Technology. These sections are used with explicit written permission of Mr. Abel.

This textbook started as a set of notes for a course based on the textbook “Programming Assembler Language: IBM^® 370 Series Architecture and Assembly Language”, the textbook mentioned above. Mr. Abel first published the textbook in 1979, with revisions in 1984 and 1989; these sections are based on chapters from the third edition. The book was published by Prentice–Hall with ISBN 0 – 13 – 728924 – 3.

The textbook is currently out–of–print. According to the publisher, all authorship rights have been returned to Mr. Abel, who kindly granted permission to use this material.

Were Mr. Abel’s textbook not out–of–print, this textbook would not have been written. As it is, copies of the book in remarkable good condition can be purchased from a number of web sites. The author of this textbook owns a good copy of Mr. Abel’s textbook, which he purchased for $7.00. The book is a classic for all those who want to understand the IBM Enterprise Server architecture, as of 2010 embodied in the System Z.

Chapter 25 of this textbook (External Storage) is an almost verbatim copy of
Chapter 17 in the Third Edition of Mr. Abel’s textbook.

Chapter 26 of this textbook (Sequential File Organization) is an almost verbatim copy of
Chapter 18 in the Third Edition of Mr. Abel’s textbook.

Chapter 27 of this textbook (ISAM) is a revision of material in Chapter 20 in the Third Edition of Mr. Abel’s textbook. At the time of writing this textbook, the ISAM has become
less important than in the time of Mr. Abel’s writing, having become a part of VSAM.

Chapter 28 of this textbook (VSAM) is an almost verbatim copy of a large part of
Chapter 19 in the Third Edition of Mr. Abel’s textbook.

Chapter 29 of this textbook (External Storage) is an almost verbatim copy of
Chapter 21 in the Third Edition of Mr. Abel’s textbook.