SPARTA News February 2002

February 2002

SPARTA Chapter President’s Corner

- by Brad Carson

Our January meeting brought us a visit from Bob Eskenberry of STK to tell us about the V960 Virtual Disk on S/390 Linux. Bob reviewed how STK’s virtual disk technology is implemented and how DASD space is actually managed on the V960. Bob them showed us how using the V960 can be beneficial with running Linux guests under VM and how a new Linux guest can be generated in a few minutes. To prove this to us Bob dialed into a system at STK and created a new Linux guest in about 3 minutes. The old VM’er in me was very happy to see another use for the ever flexible “VM”.

LabCorp’s vendor software conversion is still churning along. We have finally completed the conversion to RMM (you can talk to Tommy Thomas for the details), Fault Analyzer, Debug tool, TPNS, Tivoli Decision Support and File Manager. We still have a few more things to install, but will be complete by our deadline of February 28th.

Our QAAD LPAR relocation project is still in the planning stages and I can tell you that some of our applications staff are not too happy about it (What do you mean, I can’t read a production file with my test job!). Equipment issues and software licensing have delayed us a little bit, but some network bandwidth issues are going to put a major kink in the relocation schedule. I’ll let you all know how this goes in the future.

This month we will have a presentation on CA’s vision for Linux by Jerry Paterson of Computer Associates. I look forward to seeing you all on Tuesday, February 26th at LabCorp. Pizza, drinks, and dessert will be provided.


Future Speakers
(subject to change)


Feb. 26 CA’s Vision of Linux on S/390 by Jerry Paterson of CA
Mar. 26 C & C++ on the S/390 by Dave Rivers of Dignus Software
Apr. 30 TBA by Dan Foss or Bryan Westerholt of Compuware Inc.
May 28 TBA by next SPARTA VP

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.

Feb2002 CBT Tape Online

The directory and files from the latest CBT tape V442 (dated February 3, 2002) 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 January 29th, 2002 Meeting

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

•Fourteen (14) people were present; thirteen (13) were members.

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

•The minutes of November 2001 meeting were accepted as published in the January 2002 newsletter.

•Duane Reaugh, the Chapter Treasurer, gave the Treasurer’s report. As of December 31, 2001, the balance is $317.97.

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:

February 2002 - TBA (ed. note: see first page)
March 2002 - Ron Pimblett and Dave Rivers of Dignus Software
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 February 2002 meeting will be pizza, sodas, and dessert.

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

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

•Annual dues of $20 should be paid in January.

•The formation of the nomination committee for the 2002-2003 SPARTA Board of Directors was discussed. Duane Reaugh volunteered to chair the nomination committee. If you would be interested in any Board position, please contact Duane.

•The business portion of the meeting ended at 7:25 PM.

•Bob Eskenberry of StorageTek talked about STK virtual disk. Bob talked about Shared Virtual Array in general and the STK V960 Virtual Disk. Bob also presented a live demo of using S/390 Linux and STK V960 Virtual Disk to dynamically create a new web server system.

•The meeting was adjourned at 9:40 PM.

Treasurer’s Report for January 2002

contributed by Duane Reaugh

The balance in the account is $ 317.97 as of December 31, 2001.

Remember to renew your membership now! Dues are still only $20 for the year.

Items of Interest

z800 and z/OS.e Announcements

contributed by Ed Webb

This past week, Feb. 18, IBM made two major announcements at its Partnerworld conference: z800 computer and z/OS.e.

The z800 (code-named Raptor and also known as the “mini-z” or “baby z”) is a mid-range machine compared to the z900 high-range systems. The z800 runs z/VM, Linux for zSeries, z/OS.e, and z/OS with up to 4 engines plus a SAP (I/O engine) on a single MMU board. Some models use sub-capacity engines (clocked at less a standard z800 uniprocessor). One Linux-only member of the z800 family was announced in January 2002 at Linuxworld. The z800 is built in Japan by Hitachi for IBM. Learn more about the z800 here:

http://www.ibmlink.ibm.com/usalets&parms=H_102-052

z/OS.e is z/OS 1.3 (both available in late March 2002) but with some key restrictions: no CICS or IMS, no COBOL, PL/1, or Fortran programs. These restrictions are enforced by the OS, apparently via Language Environment. z/OS.e is priced at 10% of z/OS and only runs on a z800. z/OS.e is for “new workloads” based on Websphere, DB2, Java, and Unix Services; frequently mentioned applications for z/OS.e are SAP and Peoplesoft.

More about z/OS.e and z/OS 1.3 are here:

http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/zseries/announce/z800/

ISPF Edit Compare Facility Enhanced down to OS/390 R5

contributed by Ed Webb

APAR OW46985 fixes incorrect results from Edit Compare for System Data Sets with the SYS% Conversion Facility. But more importantly the PTFs roll new function back as far as OS/390 R5.

“To that end, the COMPARE facilities added for ISPF for OS/390 R10 were routed back to ISPF for OS/390 R5 and R8. This includes the ability to compare data without saving it to disk and the ability to compare changes in the current edit session with data as it exists on disk.”

Interior Department Restarts Computer Communications after 10 Week Outage

contributed by Ed Webb

After a 10-week court-ordered shutdown of nearly all its computer communications, the Interior Department said yesterday that it had restored some of them, bringing e-mail back to government scientists, Web service to national parks - and payments to nearly 40,000 American Indians.

The blanket electronic closing of a department that manages everything from seashores in New England to Lincoln's birthplace in Kentucky stemmed from a problem that has been out of sight of much of official Washington but has played havoc with the lives of millions of people who depend on an agency that is landlord to one-eighth of the United States.

A federal district judge ordered the department on Dec. 5 to shut down its entire computer system, saying it could not safeguard the accounting system that manages money for Indians.

....
In ruling three years ago for the Indians, Judge Lamberth wrote, “It would be difficult to find a more historically mismanaged federal program.” His ruling was upheld last year by a federal appeals court in the District of Columbia, which wrote, "The trusts at issue here were created over a hundred years ago, and have been mismanaged nearly as long."

<ed. note: see entire article at:>
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/14/technology/14INDI.html?ex=1014701491&ei=1&en=4ae4a4a1cc5782ec

Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company


Humor

News
contributed by Chris Blackshire

Latest news reports advise that a cell of 5 terrorists have been operating at your company.

Police advised earlier today that 4 of the 5 have been detained.

Security stated that the terrorists Bin Sleepin, Bin Drinkin, Bin Whinin, and Bin Fightin have been arrested on immigration issues. The Police advise further that they can find no one fitting the description of the fifth cell member, Bin Workin, in the area.

Police are confident, however, that anyone who looks like Bin Workin will be very easy to spot at your company.