ABEND – Sudden failure of a computer program, i.e., abnormal end.

Batch Processing – Execution of a series of programs without manual intervention.

CICS – Customer Information Control System middleware that supports rapid, high-volume online transaction processing.

CPU – Central processing unit is the hardware in a computer that carries out the instructions of a computer program.

CPU Hours – The unit of measure for application jobs running on the mainframe CPUs. This differs from wall clock hours. Each job may use the CPU for less than a second at a time, but all those microseconds are added together to measure CPU usage.

General Purpose Engine – An IBM 2817-606 processor (or equivalent) that operates at a known throughput and availability for application processing.

zIIP – Engine z Integrated Information Processor, a special processor that provides a higher throughput and lower cost, if applications can utilize zIIP.

DASD – Direct Access Storage Device

Database – Organized collection of data (DB2).

DB2 – IBM Database 2, a relational model database.

ERP – Enterprise Resource Planning

Mainframe – Highly stable, reliable computer designed to handle very high volume throughput (e.g., bulk data or transaction processing).

TCP/IP – Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol, the basic communication language or protocol of the Internet.

Thread-safe – In computer programming, a program portion or routine that can be called from multiple programming threads without unwanted interaction between the threads.

Throughput – Amount of data processed in a specific amount of time.

Tuning – Improving system performance, usually to handle a higher load.