The need for routine date and time simulation doesn't disappear with the 20th century. It will always be a reality, now and in the future.  That's why you should include TICTOC in your product arsenal.  

TICTOC is the software product for MVS XA and ESA that lets you run different jobs on different "virtual" (fictitious) dates. On a job-by-job basis, you can specify what date the system will say it is when the job requests this information. This lets you test how programs ran or will run on any date—past, present or future—without requiring that every job running concurrently use that same date.

TICTOC offers the mainframe industry’s most comprehensive programming language, environment, and format support. It enables testing at the end-of-period, a week, month, quarter or year processing or simply testing across midnight or any other critical time period. A simple, online interface between TICTOC and ISPF ensures that programmers can specify testing on individual development jobs or create a “wildcard” testing scenario across groups of programs. TICTOC offers some of the most stringent security features, allowing managers to define which programmers receive access even down to specific job groups or classes. Minimal training is required to gain immediate benefits from TICTOC, and the program is completely supported by a dedicated online help system.

TICTOC allows you to do your date testing without dedicating a separate system. It makes it possible to test your applications without affecting other jobs running at the same time and without requiring system operator intervention. It provides a convenient method for testing whether dates are processed correctly without requiring that you actually reset the system clock to such a date.

Here are a few examples of how you can use TICTOC:

End-of-Period Testing

Many applications perform special operations at the end of a period. Use TICTOC for end-of-week, month, quarter, or year testing. 

Time Zones

Multiple time zones are a fact of life for global businesses. TICTOC lets you run jobs using the date/time of the time zone in which they were submitted or the time zone in which the output will be viewed—all from a single system. Use TICTOC/CICS to ensure that you always see your local time no matter what CICS region (on any machine) you happen to be running on.

Rerun Failed Jobs

When jobs don't run correctly, use TICTOC to rerun them even days later using their original date and time. Or, if the job has restart capability, it can be restarted at the point in time when it stopped.

Upgrading to New Versions of Critical Applications

Moving to new releases of ERP applications is no simple process and it involves exhaustive testing. For example, if your company is moving to a new release of SAP, once the current live month end runs are performed on the older release, they must be rerun with the new release—but for a true comparison, you should use the exact date and time for both runs.

Daylight Savings Time

For many countries this is an issue. Rather than re-IPL your system to move the hour forward or backward, simply use TICTOC to make sure everyone has the correct local time on their screens.

Preparation for Other Potential Date Problems

Even after Year 2000, there are dates to come that present potential problem areas for computer systems, such as the first leap year after 2000. Have TICTOC on hand when and if those periods pose problems to your systems.

TICTOC supports all requests for date via the MVS TIME and STCKSYNC macros, whether coded directly or via the language compiler.

TICTOC offers comprehensive support for CICS via the EXEC-CICS ASK-TIME service.

Click here for a downloadable version of TICTOC.

TICTOC Product Description (PDF)