Smartphone App for Mainframe systems - A thought

Recently I submitted this idea for one of the competition. The competition was for design approaches for smartphone app for mainframe systems.
Mainframe application provides functionality for uploading the JCL jobs via FTP and executing them. And iPhone SDK supports FTP functionality. Hence we can leverage these functionalities for running the Mainframe jobs from the iPhone or iPad Apps (even we can extend further to Android as well).



Here is the simple demonstration how this can be achieved

1) User keys in the instructions to be run in the mainframe application

2) Clicks Submit button

3) Using the iPhone SDK create the Commands.jcl file

4) Open the FTP connection to the IBM mainframe (FTP details will be pre-configured using the Settings screen)

5) Run the following commands

        a. quote site filetype=jes

        b. quote site jeslrecl=80

        c. put commands.jcl

This will kicks of the job and execute the instructions in the commands.jcl file.

6) Once the instructions are executed, the response will be available in the spooled output file “JOB#####.n” where ‘n’ is the dataset number. (The challenge here will be when to read this response file)

I am yet to hear the result from the competition. Hope this idea wins me an iPad2.. LOL