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NJ Motor Vehicle Commission still using DOS?

vwestlife

vwestlife

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New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli says the state's Motor Vehicle Commission (a.k.a. DMV) is still using DOS:

http://www.mycentraljersey.com/stor...c-chances-gop-gubernatorial-primary/99577776/

"Ciattarelli said he wants to improve service of the Division of Motor Vehicles which has an antiquated computer system. 'We want to go off DOS and onto Windows,' he said."

I wonder if that is actually true, or if they're using a terminal emulator to access a UNIX server, as is still very common with large companies and organizations, and he's mistaking the text display for "DOS"?
 
I'm thinking the latter. When I moved back to Oregon in 2016, I was glancing over the counter and saw the same 80x25 character screen I remember from 30 years ago. Most financial service companies still use IBM CICS character based applications and batch processing. They simply put in middleware and a fancy gui interface... <zap> WYSIWYG in the 21st century.

Personally, I still think the older tech is better... yes there is a learning curve, but costs stay down and its more reliable. Recently, when visiting an alternative large bookstore in Portland, they were happily using Green Screen Wyse Terminals for POS. Hooked in the card reader via Serial and it worked great. Very impressive to still see the old tech in usage.
 
Move to Windows? Even that is old. They did not even get to "on the web". These days it needs to be "in teh cloudz!"
 
Went to the bank last year to get my name added to one of my wife's checking accounts. The bank representative had to run some DOS program to do it.

If it aint broke, don't fix it!
 
FWIW I wouldn't choose Windows for any new systems development at this point either.
 
pearce_jj said:
FWIW I wouldn't choose Windows for any new systems development at this point either.
Click to expand...

What would you position as the new systems development target instead?

I hope whatever NJ does that they do not use the same 3M provided solution CT DMV chose which was a year late and didn't work stripping many people of paid for vehicle registrations.
 
Well, AWS seem to have all the tools available - and none of it needs Windows. Databases run as managed instances for example, and it's good enough for FTSE 100 companies. On the client side Microsoft seems to be doing its best to destroy the platform and in any case stateless devices like IOS really seems to me to be the future.
 
smbaker said:
Went to the bank last year to get my name added to one of my wife's checking accounts. The bank representative had to run some DOS program to do it.

If it aint broke, don't fix it!
Click to expand...
Probably IBM AS/400 (a.k.a. iSeries), not DOS -- it's the standard of the financial industry.

2comwzm.jpg
 
And it's widely used in other places where the general public won't see it as well. I see it a lot in industrial inventory.

They seem to keep changing the name. Recently I've seen it called "System i" "IBM i" and even just "i".
 
My bet is it is indeed something like a 3270 emulator to a mainframe. The large hospital system I used to work for had 3270-style terminals and terminal emulators for CICS applications, and on the backend was a big Z-machine physically located about 15 miles away, but everyone called it "DOS."

Heck, when I'm working in a terminal window on my Mac, people still ask if I'm using DOS!
 
You are correct, its a 3270 terminal emulator. The NJ MVC system along with quite a few other state computer systems runs on IBM zSeries mainframes, the vast majority on CICS. They have been trying to modernize the front end of many of their mainframe applications with the CICS web services IBM pushes out. The problem with the MVC system is that it is extremely limited and things like digital driver license photos/metadata and the vehicle inspection system were basically duct taped onto the existing system.

The registration system only supports 3 character length fields for vehicle make and model! The name fields on driver's licenses is limited to 9 (a very non-binary value) characters which is already causing problems with folks using their license for ID if their name gets truncated. Hyphenated names or names with spaces aren't supported either, only letters and numbers.

http://www.nj.com/business/index.ss...rs_still_cant_get_real_names_on_licenses.html

That and for some reason the system always goes down the day you are stuck in line trying to get your license renewed.
 
njroadfan said:
That and for some reason the system always goes down the day you are stuck in line trying to get your license renewed.
Click to expand...
I've never had that happen.

I'm always in & out in ten minutes or less. :)

Best part is they even let you compare pics and if you prefer the one they took four years ago they'll let you use it on you new license.
 
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