SPARTA News April 2002

April 2002

SPARTA Chapter President’s Corner

- by Brad Carson

Our March meeting brought us a visit from Dave Rivers and Ron Pimblett of Dingus Software. They spoke to us about the software solutions that Dingus has for improving mainframe applications development using your workstation instead of mainframe cycles. Dingus supplies Assembler, C and C++ environments that will allow you to develop, test and generate object code that is ready for linking or binding on OS/390 or z/OS.
I have some good news on the LabCorp software migration. We have marked this project as complete. We were able to eliminate all of the BMC software and most of the CA and Compuware software. What we kept after the dust settled were from CA: Vision Report (Quikjob), Easytrieve+, SAMS:Vantage, Favor, and Cool:Gen, and from Compuware: FileAid/MVS, FileAid/RDX and Xpediter:Exchange. Now we get to start working on some of the additional software that was ordered. I having a lot of fun right now the NPM and NPM/IP.
As the date for the relocation of our QA/AD LPAR from RTP to Burlington gets closer, more and more developers are beginning to worry about accessing production data (something that won’t happen from 45 miles away). Of course management wants to save some money and doesn’t want us to install/license certain software on the machine in Burlington. Gee, this is so much fun to coordinate. I’ll give some more information on this move next month.
This month we will have a presentation from Brian Westerholt of Compuware. I look forward to seeing you all on Tuesday, April 30th at LabCorp RTP. Subs, drinks, and dessert will be provided.


Future Speakers
(subject to change)


Apr. 30 TBA by Brian 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

John Bryant - Vice President
GlaxoSmithKline 919-483-9548
5 Moore Drive; D.111
RTP, NC 27709

Mike Lockey - Secretary
Guilford Co. Information Services 336-412-6235
201 N. Eugene St. 336-227-2021 (Home)
Greensboro, NC 27401

Duane Reaugh - Treasurer
DTS Software 919-833-8426
2913 Wake Forest Road
Raleigh, NC 27609-7841

Ed Webb - Communications Director
SAS Institute 919-531-4162
SAS Campus Drive 919-362-0232 (Home)
Cary, NC 27513

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.

Mar2002 CBT Tape Online

The directory and files from the latest CBT tape V443 (dated March 12, 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 March 26th, 2002 Meeting

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

•Fourteen (14) people were present; eleven (11) were members.

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

•Approval of the minutes of February 2002 meeting was delayed until the April meeting because the correct minutes were not available by the newsletter deadline.

•Duane Reaugh, the Chapter Treasurer, gave the Treasurer’s report. As of March 26, 2002, the balance is $670.00.

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.

•Duane Reaugh, the nominating committee, presented the following candidates for the 2002-2003 SPARTA Board of Directors:

President Brad Carson
Vice President Duane Reaugh
Treasurer Tommy Thomas
Secretary Mike Lockey
Communications Ed Webb
Catering Chris Blackshire

At the April SPARTA meeting, additional nominations will be accepted and voting for the Board of Directors will take place.

NEW BUSINESS

•Future Speakers and Topics:

April 2002 - Dan Foss or Brian Westerholt of Compuware
May 2002 - TBA
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 March 2002 meeting will be subs or BBQ, sodas, and dessert.

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

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

•Annual dues of $20 should be paid now.

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

•Dave Rivers and Ron Pimblett of DIGNUS presented their software development products. The topics presented were:

What does DIGNUS offer?
DIGNUS LLC
Mission Statement
Success Stories
Worldwide Partners
SlickEdit Inc.
Research and Development Center
Systems/C
Systems/C++
Systems/ASM
Cross Productivity
Summary
See http://www.dignus.com/

Dave and Ron also provided a demo of Visual SlickEdit that was used to code and compile a C, C++ and an assembler program.

•The meeting was adjourned at 8:25 PM.

Treasurer’s Report for March 2002

contributed by Tommy Thomas

The balance in the account is $ 663.66 as of April 30, 2002.

Financial Report
3/01/2002 through 4/30/2002

INCOME

Opening Balance 693.15
Total Deposits 20.00
TOTAL INCOME $713.15

EXPENSES
Food 49.49
Petty Cash 120.00
TOTAL EXPENSE $169.49

BANK BALANCE 543.66
PETTY CASH 120.00
TOTAL $663.66


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

Items of Interest

Setup UNIX System Services for Automatic Time Change

contributed by Ed Webb

No doubt when the time changed this spring to Daylight Time, your shop performed some action on your OS/390 or z/OS systems to implement the change, for example, by changing the GMT offset value in CLOCK00 in PARMLIB. But do you have the correct timestamp in the UNIX System Services (USS) syslogd and other locations?

Our installation has been using USS for several years and we still had not solved the time change issue for USS. However, this spring (2002) we finally found a great answer: just set the TZ variable in CEEDOPT and Language Environment RunTime Library (LE RTL) services will change the time between daylight and standard automatically depending on the date and time of the call to the time() services.

The TZ variable is used by all POSIX C and C++ processes (except those in CICS) when the TZ variable is set. The _TZ (note underscore) variable is used for non-POSIX processes.

IBM’s instructions for modifying the CEEDOPT options are detailed in the OS/390 V2R10 LE Customization manual. The manual however only discusses run time options; the C/C++ TZ value is a variable, not an option. They do not document how to set a variable in the manual or in the source for the macros that make up the CEEDOPT options. We did however find a FAQ at the z/OS UNIX (also applies to OS/390 in this case) site.

Here’s the FAQ by Kershaw Mehta of IBM LE on the subject from April of 1999: http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvtype?MVS-OE.9318

This modification to the CEEDOPT (LE RTL options) module is used for all environments except CICS. IBM ships the member named CEEWDOPT in the CEE.SCEESAMP library as a sample of how to apply the user modification to update the CEEDOPT supplied default options:

ENVAR=(('TZ=EST5EDT'),OVR), ...Set default local time...

The OVR in the above statement indicates that the value can be overridden (see LE Customization for the details).

So make this change today for the Eastern US time zone and, after the next IPL, never have to worry about the time change for USS again. Now if only IBM would do this for CLOCKxx....

By the way, if you want the USERMOD for this change, let me know and I’ll send it to you.


Humor

Why I Flunked English

contributed by Chris Blackshire

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.

2) The farm was used to produce produce.

3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.

4) We must polish the Polish furniture.

5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.

6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.

8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

10) I did not object to the object.

11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

12) There was a row among the row of oarsmen about how to row.

13) They were too close to the door to close it.

14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.

15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.

16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.

18) After a number of injections my jaw got number.

19) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.

20) I had to subject the subject to tests on the subject.

21) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

Lets face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger, neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren’t invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren’t sweet at all, are meat.

We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. Sometimes, I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. What other reason could there be for saying that people recite at a play and play at a recital? Or, ship cargo by truck and send cargo by ship? Or, have noses that run and feet that smell? How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy opposites? How can overlook and oversee be opposites, while quite a lot and quite a few are alike?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out, and in which an alarm goes off by going on. English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race which, of course, isn’t a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible. And why, when I wind up my watch, I start it, but when I wind up this essay, I end it.


Who Reads What & Why?

contributed by Chris Blackshire

1. The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country.

2. The New York Times is read by people who think they run the country.

3. The Washington Post is read by people who think they should run the country.

4. USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don’t really understand the Washington Post. They do, however, like their smog statistics shown in pie charts.

5. The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn’t mind running the country, if they could spare the time, and if they didn’t have to leave L.A. to do it.

6. The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country.

7. The New York Daily News is read by people who aren’t too sure who’s running the country, and don’t really care as long as they can get a seat on the train.

8. The New York Post is read by people who don’t care who’s running the country either, as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated.

9. The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren’t sure there is a country, or that anyone is running it; but whoever it is, they oppose all that they stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are handicapped minority feministic atheist dwarfs, who also happen to be illegal aliens from ANY country or galaxy as long as they are democrats.

10. The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country, but need the baseball scores.

11. The National Enquirer is read by people trapped in line at the grocery store.