Hello Andrew,
Despite some more information is needed I'll try to give you an idea of how and where to start. This is what I would do.
First thing is to make a clear picture of what is the mainframe technology you want to use. For what you say, talking about USS, you are thinking about setting up the bot in a z/OS LPAR. You can use Linux for Z as well for this purpose. Both are using the same underlying technologies.
Also it will depend on what models you want to use and where the data for the model resides, the volume of data…
Let's say that you want to develop a chatbot using Tensorflow and that you want it on z/OS. You have several options:
1) Develop and use on z/OS.
In this case you can use USS as the Python runtime and use the Python AI Toolkit for z/OS where you can create your Python venvs (as in any other platform) or use Conda for it. There are a bunch of packages there to start exploring and developing. For the special case of Tensorflow you also will need zCX to host a container with the required versions.
You can find a list of all the containers that you can use in Linux for Z and in zCX inside z/OS in here.
Of course there are other options and you can deploy models using some other technologies. It all will depend upon what you want to do. The example with Tensorflow is an excuse to remark one of the possibilities that run on zCX.
2) Develop and train outside z/OS and exploit on z/OS (as you mention USS).
When you develop outside z/OS you can deploy the models in ONNX format and PMML format so that they will work as in any other platform.
As said, you have many options and this is a quick summary for you to understand that a taylor-fit solution can be built.
If you need more info, please, contact me and we can discuss further.
Regards,
D.
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Diego Cardalliaguet
IBM Data&AI zStack Leader for EMEA
IBM
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Original Message:
Sent: Thu April 18, 2024 05:07 AM
From: Andrew McCandless
Subject: Implement a Chatbot on the Mainframe
Hi All,
I have been asked recently about implementation of a chat bot with the mainframe.
The question I was asked is how would I do this and I can see various way this may be achieved, has anybody done this as yet?
- Would you use USS
- API calls
- Other
Has anyone done this and can share the learning on this - is there a value in writing it from scratch or using one of the many chat bot makers if so which one.
Many thanks everyone - Question asked to me and I wanted to ask the community.
Andy
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Andrew McCandless
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