Controlling time-sharing

Time-sharing allows programmers at remote terminals to develop, test, and execute programs without the turnaround delays that occur when they submit jobs to a computer center. With time-sharing, a large number of jobs can share the resources of a system concurrently, and remote terminal users can exercise primary control over the execution of their jobs. Therefore, we can define time-sharing as the shared, conversational, and concurrent use of a computing system by a number of users at remote terminals.

Time-sharing in z/OS is provided by TSO/E. For more information about TSO/E see z/OS TSO/E User's Guide.

You can display information about logged-on time-sharing users by using the DISPLAY command. You can keep track of terminal users logging on and off the system by using the MONITOR command. In response to the MONITOR command, the system displays the user id for each LOGON and LOGOFF. To stop the system's monitoring of terminal use, issue the STOPMN command.

To communicate with time-sharing users you can use the SEND command to:
  • Send messages to specific users or all users who are receiving messages
  • Send messages to specific users or to all users logging on to the system
  • Save messages in the broadcast data set
  • List messages in the broadcast data set
  • Delete messages from the broadcast data set

The broadcast data set, SYS1.BRODCAST, has mail and notices sections.