SPARTA News March 2001 Page #

March 2001

SPARTA Chapter President’s Corner

- by Chris Blackshire

In the January and February 2001 meetings and newsletter, I announced that after 5 years of being your SPARTA president, I want to turn your leadership over to someone else. Please support Tommy Thomas when he calls as he is trying to fill the President’s position for the upcoming year. The slate of candidates will be presented at the March meeting with elections in April.

It is now a year into only publishing the newsletter electronically on our web page. Thanks to Mike Lockey and please let Mike know if there is anything you would like to add or see on the web page. Coming soon, we will be publishing the SPARTA bylaws on the web page, which includes the duties of the officers.

I have been watching the NCAA March Madness all this weekend instead of spending my time writing this newsletter. I hope all of you had a very enjoyable St. Patrick’s day and that the luck of the Irish is following you.

May you always have…
Walls for the winds
A roof for the rain
Tea beside the fire
Laughter to cheer you
Those you love near you
And all you heart may desire.
Next meeting is on Tuesday March 27th at LabCorp. BarBQ, drinks, and dessert will be provided.

Thanks to all who have paid their dues. If you haven’t paid yet, please bring your 2001 annual SPARTA dues ($20) to the March meeting.

Future Speakers
(subject to change)

Mar. 27 SHARE Reports by Duane Reaugh of DTS and Mike Lockey of Guilford County
Apr. 24 Sally Adams of IBM

We need ideas and volunteers for future speakers. 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 by phone or e-mail as noted below.


SPARTA Corporate Sponsors:

Phillips Software

2000-2001 SPARTA
Board of Directors

Chris Blackshire - President
Perot Systems 919-992-4602
P.O. Box 13010
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709 Chris.Blackshire@nortelnetworks.com

John Bryant - Vice President
GlaxoSK 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 27609-7841 Duane@DTSsoftware.com

Ed Webb - Communications Director
SAS Institute 919-531-4162
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 6:15 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.

Latest CBT Tape Online

The directory and files from the latest CBT tape V432 (dated Jan. 25, 2001) are available from www.cbttape.org.

If you need a complete tape, contact Brad at LabCorp (Brad_Carson@labcorp.com or 336-436-4065) or Ed Webb (see Director’s list for contact info).

Minutes of the February 27, 2001 Meeting

•Meeting was called to order at 7:00 PM by Chris Blackshire, the Chapter President.

•Ten (10) people were present; all were members.

•Introductions were not done as the evening speaker, Ed Webb, knew everyone.

•The minutes of January 2001 meeting were accepted as published in the February 2001 newsletter.

•The treasurer’s report was accepted as published in the February 2001 newsletter.

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:

March 2001 - SHARE, Duane Reaugh and Mike Lockey
April 2001 - Sally Adams of IBM
Other ideas:
- TDMF - Ken Frump
- WLM Goal Mode - Jim Horne
- UNIX Services for OS/390
- IBM New Announcements
- CICS Web Bridge

If you have suggestions about speakers and topics, contact John Bryant.

•The March 27th meeting will be at LabCorp in the RTP.

•Food for the March 2001 meeting will be BarBQ and sodas.

•Thanks to Brad Carson of LabCorp for hosting the February meeting.

•The nomination committee for the April 2001 election will be Tommy Thompson. As all other officers are willing to serve another year, Tommy only has to find a replacement for Chris Blackshire. Please call Tommy, if you are interested in the President’s position. Ed Webb will send a copy of the by laws, which contain all the officer duties, to everyone on the SPARTA mailing list.

•The business portion of the meeting ended at 7:20 PM.

•Ed Webb of Sas Institute talked about the Installation and Customization of the IBM OS/390 Service Update Facility (SUF) V2R1M2. One of the reasons for SUF is that you get service for only your product FMIDs when you ask for updates. Topics that Ed talked about were:

-SUF Customer Application Server (CAS) software is not SMP/E maintained
-SUF OS/390 host components are part of SMP/E
-SMP/E FMID and PSP references were noted
-Read and print the SUF User Guide sections as needed (PDF format)
-Websites: http://www.s390.ibm.com/suf and http://www.s390.ibm.com/smpe
Have to go through a registration process and entitlement via an IBM service agreement.

-Configuring OS/390 for CAS
A few USERMODs needed
-Installing the CAS on an OS/390 UNIX Server
Create a UNIX userid called SUF and all the associated files.
-Installing the CAS Code
-Testing Your Internet Connection
Tested the java scripts and connections to IBM Boulder
-HTTP and WebSphere Server Setup
-Creating a Profile for Your Orders
-Placing an Order for Service
The first successful SUF order was complete.
Did a submit for a CICS order
-Performed additional customization
-SUF Version 3 due in late March 2001
Eliminates the need for WebSphere on OS/390

If you didn’t attend, Ed can send you a copy of the presentation.

Thanks to Ed for the well designed and presented topic.

•The meeting was adjourned at 8:35 PM.

Treasurer’s Report for March 2001

contributed by Duane Reaugh

Because Duane was away on business, the Treasurer’s report has not changed. The bank balance was $ 602.69 in early March.

Items of Interest

IOF 7F available via ‘net

contributed by Ed Webb

(Excerpts from a recent Triangle Systems e-mail):

Release 7F is now generally available for download from our web page at: http://www.triangle-systems.com

Click on “IOF Technical Support”
Click on “Download or Order Release 7F”
Click on “IOF/TSO Release 7F”

Follow the instructions to download and install IOF/TSO 7F. We recommend that you specify the name of your IOF 7E or 7D OPTIONS library as the old options DSNAME.

Please contact IOF Technical Support if you have problems, questions, comments or suggestions at:

Phone: (919) 544-0090
email: IOFTech@Triangle-Systems.com

SUF V3 Due in March 2001

contributed by Ed Webb

(Excerpts from a recent IBM ETR):

Currently SUF 2.1.2 does not work with Java 1.3 and Websphere 3.5, thus it is not supported and there will be no plans to support it since the ‘new’ version of SUF will be out shortly and does not require WebSphere.

(And an excerpt from a recent IBM SUF Feedback e-mail):

Right now, we are scheduled to go GA with the (SUF) 3.1 code on Friday, March 23....

SMP/E RECEIVE needs larger SYSUT1

contributed by Ed Webb

>From APAR IR42960:

This APAR updates OS/390 SMP/E V2R5/R6 and V2R7/R8/R9/R10 (UR52518) to allow for SMPPTS spill data sets. If the primary SMPPTS data set is full and spill data sets are defined, SMP/E will automatically write any members that could not fit in the primary SMPPTS data set to an SMPPTS spill data set....

The SYSUT1 data set may now be used during RECEIVE processing to buffer a piece of a SYSMOD. When receiving SYSMODs, SMP/E needs to buffer the SYSMOD member before it can be written out to the SMPPTS or an SMPPTS spill data set. SMP/E will buffer as much of the SYSMOD as it can in storage. The amount of the SYSMOD buffered in storage is based on the REGION size of the job and the size of the SYSMOD. If your REGION size is large, most SYSMODs will be buffered entirely in storage. However, if you are processing a very large SYSMOD, SMP/E may not be able to buffer it entirely in storage. In this case, it will buffer the remainder in the SYSUT1 data set. So you may need to increase the space allocation for your SYSUT1 data set if you are processing very large SYSMODs....

>From our experience at SAS:
A larger REGION (64M or 128M) will help for RECEIVE but SYSUT1 should be larger, perhaps 100 cylinders primary and 50 secondary.

Recent Redbooks

contributed by Ed Webb

Here’s a couple of recent Redbooks of interest:

SG24-5685-00 Prepare OS/390 for WebSphere Enterprise Edition
Published: Feb 27, 2001 228 pages; see http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg245685.html

SG24-6105-00 VSAM Demystified
Published: Feb 02, 2001 280 pages; see http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg246105.html

Humor

Poem for Computer Users Over 40

contributed by Chris Blackshire

A computer was something on TV
>From a science fiction show of note
A window was something you hated to clean
And ram was the cousin of a goat.

Meg was the name of my girlfriend
And gig was a job for the nights
Now they all mean different things
And that really mega bytes.

An application was for employment
A program was a TV show
A cursor used profanity
A keyboard was a piano.

Memory was something you lost with age
A CD was a bank account
And if you had a 3-in floppy
You hoped nobody found out.

Compress was something you did to the garbage
Not something you did to a file
And if you unzipped anything in public
You’d be in jail for a while.

Log on was adding wood to the fire
Hard drive was a long trip on the road
A mouse pad was where a mouse lived
And a backup happened to your commode.

Cut you did with a pocketknife
Paste you did with glue
A web was a spider’s home
And a virus was the flu.

I guess I’ll stick to my pad and paper
And the memory in my head
I hear nobody’s been killed in a computer crash....
But when it happens, I’ll bet they wish they were dead.