SPARTA News January 2002

January 2002

SPARTA Chapter President’s Corner

- by Brad Carson

Welcome to 2002. I hope that everyone had a great Christmas and received the gifts that they wanted. I managed to survive the holidays and my anniversary intact (if not a little heavier).
Our November meeting brought us a review of the OS/390 Technical Conference by John Bryant of GlaxoSmithKline. John provided the group with a number of handouts and great information that he was able to obtain at the conference. I’ve always found the “Grab Bag” and “Hot Topics” information to be very useful.
LabCorp’s vendor software conversion is still churning along. We have completed the conversion to OPC (now called Tivoli Workload Scheduler), SA/390 (finally automated shutdowns and IPLs) and SCLM. Our RMM conversion has been pushed to next month, but by that time we should have completed the conversions for Fault Analyzer, Debug tool, and File Manager. We still have a few more things to convert but the big ones will be completed by our deadline of February 28^th.
Just when I see some light at the end of the tunnel, management decided that our QA/Application Development LPAR needs to the moved from RTP to a machine back in Burlington. So here we go again with what we call our QAAD project (V2). At least we won’t have to Parallel Sysplex these two systems together over 45 miles. I’ll keep you all updated on how this is going in the future.
This month we will have a presentation on virtual disk on S/390 Linux by STK. I look forward to seeing you all on Tuesday, January 29th at LabCorp. Subs, drinks, and dessert will be provided.


Future Speakers
(subject to change)


Jan. 29 V960 Virtual Disk on S/390 Linux by Bob Eskenberry of StorageTek
Feb. 26 TBA

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.

2001-2002 SPARTA
Board of Directors

Brad Carson - President
LabCorp 919-572-7504
1912 Alexander Drive
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709 Brad_Carson@labcorp.com

John Bryant - Vice President
GlaxoSmithKline 919-483-9548
5 Moore Drive; D.111
RTP, NC 27709 JEB33378@gsk.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 V440 (dated December 11, 2001) are available from www.cbttape.org.

If you need a complete tape, contact Brad Carson at LabCorp or Ed Webb at SAS (see Board of Director’s list for contact info).

Minutes of the November 27th, 2001 Meeting

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

•About twelve (12) people were present; all were members.

•Everyone in the room introduced themselves, told where they worked, and briefly described their job function.

•The minutes of October 2001 meeting were accepted as published in the November 2001 newsletter.

•Duane Reaugh, the Chapter Treasurer, was unable to attend the meeting. As of August 28, 2001 the balance is $488.08.

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:

January 2002 - Virtual Disk on S/390 LInux by Bob Eskenberry of StorageTek
Other ideas:
- Conversion to RMM - Tommy Thomas
- 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.

•Food for the January 2002 meeting will be subs, sodas, and dessert.

•The January SPARTA meeting will be held at LabCorp in RTP.

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

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

•SPARTA member John Bryant of GlaxoSmithKline presented handouts and his notes from the early November 2001 IBM OS/390 and z/OS Tech Conference. Contact John (see Board of Directors earlier) for details and handouts.

•The meeting was adjourned at 9:15 PM.

Treasurer’s Report for November 2001

contributed by Duane Reaugh

As I have been on the road since forever, I suspect there are a few dinner bills queued up but the balance in the account is $ 488.08 The last dinner bill I paid was for July so there is Aug., Sep. & Oct. outstanding.

Items of Interest

CICS Tran-o-Service REXX

contributed by Ed Webb

(Ed. note: excerpt from www.search390.com article)

by Jim Keohane --- (with apologies to Jurassic Park) 15 Jan 2002

REXX for CICS (a.k.a. CICS/REXX) has been around since ‘94. IBM dropped it in ‘97 but later introduced a new version in 1999. It’s now an integral part of CICS TS (Transaction Services). For some reason it’s largely still a secret. Why? Beats me.

REXX is the S/390 (OS/390, z/OS, VSE, VM/CMS, etc.) scripting language of choice. REXX for CICS (R4C) has its own Application Development Environment (ADE) with CICS based Editor and VSAM-based REXX File Structure (RFS). You can also store EXECs in a native MVS partitioned dataset (PDS) and edit from ISPF or elsewhere.

At the very minimum R4C is a worthwhile prototyping and ad hoc tool even with expected performance problems due to its interpretive execution. I would have thought by now there would be an option for compiled REXX but I haven’t seen it. <Sigh>

R4C is well fitted for CICS web enablement. Its inherent string handling is much superior to that of other S/390 languages. HTML parsing and construction is a snap.

R4C’s RFS is a hierarchical file system logically analogous to what you see on Unix, windows, OS/2 and, yes, web Universal Resource Locators (URL’s).

R4C allows in-stream EXEC DB2 and EXEC SQL and dynamic EXEC CICS.

(Ed. note: See rest of article and sample code at http://search390.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid10_gci790670,00.html
--------------------------------------------------------------

Jim Keohane (jimkeo@multi-platforms.com) is president of New York consulting company Multi-Platforms, Inc. His company specializes in commercial software development/consulting with emphasis on cross-platform and performance issues.

All Rights Reserved, Copyright 2000 - 2002, TechTarget

DB2 REXX

contributed by Ed Webb

(Ed. note: excerpt from www.search390.com article)
18 Jan 2002 by Tom Moulder

I want to access DB2 tables from REXX. I have found out that from V5 upwards REXX support is built in to DB2, and that I need to use DSNREXX do do that. I tried using DSNREXX but found that is not available on our mainframe installation.

Can you tell me if DSNREXX is something which is included with DB2 or it has to be purchased as an extra from IBM? We are currently using DB2 V6.

This question posed on 18 January 2002

DB2 language support for Rexx is provided by IBM on three different types of media; 3480, 4mm DAT and 9/6250 mag tape. The feature code you would order along with DB2 to get this is 5108, 5543 and 5216 respectively. According to the Washington Systems Center you can also download this support from the IBM DB2 web site at http:www.ibm.com/software/data/db2/os390. I am not sure exactly what they downloaded because it was not specifically stated, however I did find the index of downloads at the following URL http://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/download/downloadaz.jsp#R. REXX family of support is under the "R" listings. BTW, this is a no cost option or download.

The install process does require the installation of the FMID JDB661H. This is probably not installed, but can be installed after the fact by the person responsible for your DB2 install process.

So lets wrap this up, the first suggestion I have is to check with the installer to see if you have the FMID that is noted above. If not, then you can order it or download it from the web. I believe that you will find the FMID on the DB2 media and that your quickest resolution will be to get that installed.

Good Luck

All Rights Reserved, Copyright 2000 - 2002, TechTarget

OS/VS COBOL Fades Away (Soon)

contributed by Ed Webb

(Ed. note: excerpt from www.search390.com article)
18 Jan 2002 by Tom Moulder


I have heard that the number of OS/VS COBOL licenses are dropping. How many or what percentage of COBOL Programs are OS/VS COBOL in the market place? Have any surveys been done or has IBM made any of this information available?

How long do we have until they will no longer work?

This question posed on 09 January 2002

The number of OS/VS COBOL licenses is dropping steadily, but we have no idea what this means in terms of the customer inventory. One customer could have both OS/VS COBOL and COBOL for OS/390 & VM, and have 99% OS/VS COBOL programs in production, while another could have both compilers but have 99% COBOL for OS/390 & VM in production! Our best guess is that more than 50% of all customers are 100% compiled with COBOL for MVS & VM or later, and no customers have more than 50% OS/VS COBOL in production. None of the details can be released to external distribution, sorry.

How long will OS/VS COBOL programs work? It depends on what you mean. If they are running under the OS/VS COBOL or VS COBOL II run-time libraries, then they are already running unsupported. If they are running under LE they are supported by IBM service for at least a few more years. For CICS, the story has changed dramatically since November. From the CICS TS 2.2 announcement:

Translator support for the earlier (pre-Language Environment) compilers OS/VS COBOL (5740-CB1, 5740-LM1, and 5734-CB4), VS COBOL II (5668-958, also 5688-023), OS PL/I Version 1 (5734-PL1), OS PL/I Version 2 (5668-910, also 5668-909), and SAA? AD/Cycle? C/370? (5688-216) is withdrawn and is not available in this release. It is planned that run-time support for OS/VS COBOL programs (regardless of run-time library used) and for any other programs running under pre-Language Environment run-time libraries will be withdrawn from the next release.

So, the end is near (and announced) for OS/VS COBOL programs on CICS, the end for non-CICS will come some time after that.

All Rights Reserved, Copyright 2000 - 2002, TechTarget

Humor

The “Two-Cow Explanation” of What Makes....

contributed by Chris Blackshire

....A CHRISTIAN:
You have two cows. You keep one and give one to your neighbor.

....A SOCIALIST:
You have two cows. The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor.

....A REPUBLICAN:
You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. So what?

....A DEMOCRAT:
You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. You feel guilty for being successful. You vote people into office who tax your cows, forcing you to sell one to raise money to pay the tax. The people you voted for then take the tax money and buy a cow and give it to your neighbor. You feel righteous.

....A COMMUNIST:
You have two cows. The government seizes both and provides you with milk.

....A FASCIST:
You have two cows. The government seizes both and sells you the milk. You join the underground and start a campaign of sabotage.

....DEMOCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE:
You have two cows. The government taxes you to the point you have to sell both to support a man in a foreign country who has only one cow, which was a gift from your government.

....CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE:
You have two cows. You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.

....BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE:
You have two cows. The government takes them both, shoots one, milks the other, pays you for the milk, then pours the milk down the drain.

....AN AMERICAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows. You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows. You are surprised when the cow drops dead.

....A FRENCH CORPORATION:
You have two cows. You go on strike because you want three cows.

....A JAPANESE CORPORATION:
You have two cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk.

....A GERMAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows. You reengineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.

....AN ITALIAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows but you don’t know where they are. You break for lunch.

....A RUSSIAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows. You count them and learn you have five cows. You count them again and learn you have 42 cows. You count them again and learn you have 12 cows. You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.

....A MEXICAN CORPORATION:
You think you have two cows, but you don’t know what a cow looks like. You take a nap.

....A SWISS CORPORATION:
You have 5000 cows, none of which belongs to you. You charge for storing them for others.

....A BRAZILIAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows. You enter into a partnership with an American corporation. Soon you have 1000 cows and the American corporation declares bankruptcy.

....AN INDIAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows. You worship them.

....A TALIBAN
You have two cows. You turn them loose in the Afghan “countryside” and they both die. You blame the godless American infidels.