SPARTA News May 2000 Page #
May 2000
SPARTA Chapter President’s Corner
- by Chris Blackshire
First, thank you for reelecting me as your president. I feel like I am starting my second 4-year term. Thanks to Duane Reaugh for taking on the Treasurer’s job. Thanks to Mike Killam for being the treasurer for many years.
I am really pleased with using the web page to publish our newsletter. I feel like our web page is letting us mainframe supporters belong to the current computing environment. As an unnamed company once said, “What do you want the Internet to be?”
Do think about getting your fellow systems programmers to join SPARTA? We need to work on getting all our 1999 members to rejoin in 2000 and get some new and ex-members to rejoin. Send an e-mail to prospective members and include our web page address. Invite them to a meeting. I would like us to get the membership back up to 40 as it once was.
My wife and I just returned from a week in Disney World in Orlando, Fla. This year’s theme is the Millennium (what else in the year 2000?). We watched the Tapestry of Nations parade 8 times. It is a vibrant parade uniting stunning artistry, inspirational music, and millennium inspired themes. If you can possibly get to WDW this year, do go, as everything is a treasure to remember.
From our decision last meeting, our next meeting is on the fourth Tuesday, May 23. We will be meeting at LabCorp with subs being the menu of choice. Drinks, and dessert will be provided.
May Meeting Date Changed to May 23, 2000. Be sure to update your calendar.
Future Speakers
(subject to change)
May 23 A New Data Recovery Paradigm by Geoff Comrie, CEO and President of Offsite Services
June 27 To be announced
We need ideas and volunteers for future speakers. Please consider giving a presentation at a future meeting. Presentations don’t have to be fancy, just informative and interesting. Even a 5 or 10 minute talk can start an interesting interaction. Contact John Bryant at the phone number or e-mail address below.
2000-2001 SPARTA
Board of Directors
Chris Blackshire - President
Northern Telecom 919-992-4602
P.O. Box 13010
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709 Chris.Blackshire@nortelnetworks.com
John Bryant - Vice President
Glaxo Wellcome Inc. 919-483-9548
M/S D111; 5 Moore Drive
RTP, NC 27709 JEB33378@GLAXOWELLCOME.COM
Mike Lockey - Secretary
Guilford Co. Information Services 336-412-6235
201 N. Eugene St. 336-227-2021 (Home)
Greensboro, NC 27401 MLOCKEY@netpath.net
Duane Reaugh - Treasurer
DTS Software 919-833-8426
2913 Wake Forest Road
Raleigh, NC 276nn Duane@DTSsoftware.com
Ed Webb - Communications Director
SAS Institute 919-677-8000 x4162
SAS Campus Drive 919-362-0232 (Home)
Cary, NC 27513 EDWISTUO@aol.com
Meetings
Meetings are scheduled for the last Tuesday evening of each month (except no meeting in December), with optional dinner at 6:30 p.m. and the meeting beginning at 7:00 p.m.
These monthly meetings are held at LabCorp’s Center for Molecular Biology and Pathology (CMBP) near the Research Triangle Park (see last page). Take I-40 to Miami Boulevard and go north. Turn right onto Alexander Drive. Go about a mile or so. Then turn right into LabCorp complex and turn Left to the CMBP Building. In the lobby, sign in as a visitor to see Brad Carson. Brad will escort you to the conference room.
Call for Articles
If you have any ideas for speakers, presentations, newsletter articles, or are interested in taking part in a presentation, PLEASE contact one of the Board of Directors with your suggestions.
Newsletter Mailings
The SPARTA chapter policy is to mail a copy of the monthly chapter newsletter to each SPARTA member, NaSPA national, each advertiser, persons who have requested a copy, and to other chapters who send us a copy of their newsletter. The newsletter is mailed about the 20th of each month so you can prepare for the meeting. The mailing list is maintained by Mike Lockey at (336) 412-6235; if you have corrections or problems receiving your newsletter, call Mike.
New 1999 CBT Tape
Brad Carson now has copies of version 421 dated August 1999 of the CBT tape. Brad brings cartridges to each meeting and swaps a scratch cartridge for a copy of the CBT. If you need a round tape, contact Brad at LabCorp (Brad_Carson@labcorp.com or 336-436-4065) for details on sending a tape to LabCorp.
The new CBT tape is also available from www.cbttape.org.
Minutes of the April 25, 2000 Meeting
•Meeting was called to order at 7:00 PM by Chris Blackshire, the Chapter President.
•Nineteen (19) people were present; fifteen (15) were members.
•Everyone in the room introduced themselves, told where they worked, and briefly described their job functions.
•The minutes of March 2000 meeting were accepted as published in the April 2000 newsletter.
•Mike Killam, the chapter treasurer, presented a estimate of our account balance:
Balance as of April 2000 about $ 200.00
OLD BUSINESS
•Articles are needed for this newsletter. If you would like to write an article for this newsletter, please contact Ed Webb. Keep in mind that you don’t really need to write the article, it can be an article that you read that you would like to share with the membership.
•The SPARTA Web page is now available. To access the SPARTA Web page, point your Web browser to this site: www.netpath.net/~mlockey/sparta.html. Please send any comments or suggestions about the Web page to Mike Lockey (mlockey@netpath.net). Be sure to check the Web page every once in a while to see any new or changed information.
NEW BUSINESS
•Future Speakers and Topics:
May 2000 - TBA
June 2000 - TBA
July 2000 - Tom Rydzewski of IBM
Other ideas:
- UNIX Services for OS/390
- Workload Manager
- SAP
If you have suggestions about speakers and topics, contact John Bryant.
•The May meeting will be at LabCorp in the RTP.
•Food for the May 2000 meeting will be subs and sodas.
•Thanks to Brad Carson of LabCorp for hosting the April meeting.
•Brad Carson and Dave Rivers will setup a new List Server.
•To save duplicating and mailing costs, the newsletter will be put on the web site. The newsletter can be viewed and/or printed before the meeting.
•Chris Blackshire gave the nominating committee report. Chris reported he will place his name in nomination for President. He opened nominations to the floor; there were no new nominations. A motion was made to accept the nominees as the 2000-2001 SPARTA Board of Directors. The motion was seconded and voted on unanimously.
The 2000-2001 SPARTA Board of Directors are:
President Chris Blackshire
Vice President John Bryant
Treasurer Duane Reaugh
Secretary Mike Lockey
Communications Ed Webb
•The business portion of the meeting ended at 7:30 PM.
•Skip Vail and Joe Paolieelli of Ganymede software talked about Network Performance Measurements. They talked about the Chariot and Pegasus software products from Ganymede. Chariot provides stress testing of network hardware and software and of applications. Pegasus provides end to end network and applications monitoring.
•The meeting was adjourned at 8:30 PM.
Items of Interest
IBM Announces Details of OS/390 V2 R10
contributed by Ed Webb
On May 16, 2000, IBM issued announcement #200-145 titled IBM OS/390 VERSION 2 RELEASE 10 AVAILABILITY. With the usual list of features, IBM also added some important (and controversial) statements of intent. Release 10 ships on the usual six month cycle date, September 29, 2000.
Release 10 offers:
•Ease in porting C and C++ applications to S/390 through Extra Performance Linkage
•Application development flexibility through downward compatibility of Language Environment
•Better security in the network operating environment and the TCP/IP environment
•Increased flexibility in data storage and management
•Standard workstation access to SAM, PDS(E), and VSAM files
•Easier systems management through enhanced performance reporting
•Wizard technology, multimedia instructional animations, and Automatic Alter support to advance ease-of-use.
WLM Goal Mode Required by Spring 2002:
“Consequently, the operating system release scheduled for availability in the second half 2001 will be the last release to support WLM compatibility mode. Goal mode will be the only supported mode starting with the operating system release scheduled for the first half 2002.
A number of functions which have been considered by some customers to be inhibitors to the migration from WLM compatibility to goal mode will be addressed in the Release 10 time frame via APAR service. These items include:
•Enhanced CPU management to provide protection for critical work across major workload shifts
•Selective management of CICS or IMS(tm) regions with either velocity goals or transaction response time goals
•Storage Isolation for critical regions over long, idle periods
•Classification by system group, system name, or “subsystem collection” name (for example, JES2 MAS name) - support for heterogeneous Parallel sysplex clusters.
To aid customers in their migration, a Goal Mode Migration Tool is available at no charge starting the first half 2000. The Goal Mode Migration Tool can be accessed from the WLM Web page at: http://www.ibm.com/s390/wlm/.”
“OS/390 R11” (Spring 2001) requires G5 or higher processor:
“To balance the needs of customers, including providing some protection for earlier processor investments, IBM has chosen to define periodic architecture level sets. These are releases that begin to exploit new architecture features, which in turn define a minimum server level on which that release will execute. Today's announcement includes information on the new architecture level set:
THE OPERATING SYSTEM RELEASE PLANNED FOR FIRST HALF 2001, WILL REQUIRE ONE OF THESE SERVERS:
- S/390 Multiprise 3000 (or compatible server)
- S/390 Parallel Enterprise -- G5, or higher (or compatible server).
The architectural enhancements that will be required by the operating system release scheduled for availability in first half 2001 can be found at the following URL: http://www.ibm.com/s390/os390/plug1.html.”
A Primer for SAS Software
contributed by Ed Webb
I found a book named The Little SAS Book - a primer that might help you learn SAS basics. If your shop has SAS Version 8 in-house (even if not installed), a copy of this book came in the V8 package. Another book that comes with V8 is Intro to SAS Programming. There’s a CD-ROM with online books (regrettably not BookManager format) with V8 as well.
If your installation does not have V8 and you cannot find The Little SAS Book - a primer or Intro to SAS Programming book, you can go to SAS Institute Publications’ web site at http://www.sas.com/pubs for more about SAS Publications and to order any (for $$$).
SHARE in Boston in July and March Proceedings Now Online
contributed by Ed Webb
Excerpts from a recent SHARE e-mail:
“SHARE in Anaheim, held March 5-10, was a terrific success. More than 3,300 technology professionals attended SHARE's first meeting of Y2K. You can benefit from the technical expertise shared in Anaheim through either of two avenues:
Online Conference Proceedings, featuring more than 580 presentations delivered in Anaheim, are now available at http://www.share.org/ana_proceedings.html?hqmail000511. Feel free to forward this URL to any interested colleagues as the Proceedings are available to the general public.
Webcasts of several technical presentations from Anaheim are available on demand to SHARE members via your Web browser. For complete information on viewing and listening to any of these presentations, Visit http://www.share.org/members?hqmail000511 .”
Humor
The Van Gogh Family Tree
contributed by Chris Blackshire
After much careful research it has been discovered that the artist Vincent Van Gogh had many relatives.
Among them were:
His obnoxious brother Please Gogh
His dizzy aunt Verti Gogh
The brother who ate prunes Gotta Gogh
The brother who worked at a convenience store Stopn Gogh
The grandfather from Yugoslavia U Gogh
The brother who bleached his clothes white Hue Gogh
The cousin from Illinois Chica Gogh
His magician uncle Wherediddy Gogh
His Mexican cousin Amee Gogh
The Mexican cousin’s American half brother Grin Gogh
The nephew who drove a stage coach Wellsfar Gogh
The constipated uncle Cant Gogh
The ballroom dancing aunt Tan Gogh
The bird lover uncle Flamin Gogh
His nephew psychoanalyst E Gogh
The fruit loving cousin Man Gogh
An aunt who taught positive thinking Wayto Gogh
The little bouncy nephew Poe Gogh
A sister who loved disco Go Gogh
His Italian uncle Day Gogh
And his niece who travels the country in a van Winnie Bay Gogh
Membership Information
Membership in the SPARTA chapter is $20.00 per year for January through December. The 2000 chapter dues are due January 1, 2000. Please renew your membership! If you want to join SPARTA, please send your check for $20.00 for the 2000 annual dues to either:
Make check payable to SPARTA. The membership dues are not prorated to simplify our accounting procedures. Please include the membership application form with your check.
As a member, you may request copies of the handouts for any meeting from any officer.
Membership Report as of February 29, 2000
If you have questions about this list, call Mike Lockey at 336-412-6235.
We currently have 27 members in the chapter as follows:
(# = 2000 new member) ($ = renewed for 2000)
Don’t Forget the Next SPARTA Meeting
Special Meeting Date:
Tuesday, May 23, 2000
Location: LabCorp in the RTP
Take I-40 to Miami Boulevard and go north. Turn right onto Alexander Drive. Go about a mile or so. Then turn right into LabCorp complex and turn left to the CMBP Building. In the lobby, sign in as a visitor to see Brad Carson. Brad will escort you to the conference room.
Free Food: Subs, Drinks, Dessert
Program:
A New Data Recovery Paradigm
Speakers:
Geoff Comrie of Offsite Services
SPARTA News
P.O. Box 13194
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-3194
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