SPARTA News February 2005

February 2005

SPARTA Chapter President’s Corner

- by Brad Carson

Welcome to February, I hope everyone is keeping warm. Some of us are getting ready to travel to SHARE at the end of the month (Yea!). I hope that everyone enjoyed Bill Reeder's presentation at our January meeting. I thought it was an excellent presentation on where Linux on z/Series can be utilized in an organization. I want to remind everyone that we are collecting our annual dues starting this month. Please see Tommy Thomas to renew your membership if you haven't done so already.

We've had some good news (at least for us) at DHTS. Our DR test for this month has been postponed. This will allow us to continue work on upgrading our ISV products to support z/OS 1.6. I have the honor of handling BMC MainVIEW suite and SAS. While this is going on we are restructuring our volume backups to take advantage of 3590-J capacity. This way we shouldn't have to send so many tapes offsite for DR. I wrote a few REXX execs to help with the reporting and JCL generation for this project.

At DDA what was done to get around the 2 GB limit on the SCO tar command is that we SMB mount a windows server volume and GZIP and copy the data there. Then all that data will be backed up to an LTO tape for safe keeping. Now I'm diving into the world of distributed DB2 between z/OS, OS/400 and Windows. So now the joys of DRDA are coming to visit me. We'll see how this turns out.

This month our speaker will be Jim Horne from Lowes Companies to talk to us about "Capacity and Performance Issues". I look forward to seeing you all at LabCorp on the 22nd.

P.S. Be sure to ask for Tommy Thomas when you arrive at LabCorp. Subs, drinks, and dessert will be provided.


Pay Your $20 Dues This Month!


Future Speakers
(subject to change)


Feb. 22 - Mainframe Limitations by Jim Horne of Lowes Companies
Mar. 22 - SHARE Recap by multiple speakers

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 Duane Reaugh by phone as noted below.

2004-2005 SPARTA
Board of Directors

Brad Carson - President
Duke Health Technology Solutions 919-668-0545
2424 Ervin Road, Suite 9000
Durham, NC 27710


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

Mike Lockey - Secretary
Guilford Co. Information Services 336-641-6235
201 N. Eugene St. 336-227-2021 (Home)
Greensboro, NC 27401

Tommy Thomas - Treasurer
LabCorp 336-436-4178
231 Maple Ave, Koury Ctr 3rd Fl. 919-361-7267
Burlington, NC 27215

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 usually 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 Tommy Thomas. Tommy 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.

July 2004 CBT Tape Online

The directory and files from the latest CBT tape V466 (dated July 25, 2004) are available from www.cbttape.org.

If you need help obtaining one or more files, contact Brad Carson at Duke Health or Ed Webb at SAS (see Board of Director’s list for contact info).

Minutes of the January 25th, 2005 Meeting

•Meeting was called to order at 7:04 PM by Brad Carson, the Chapter President.

•Fourteen (14) people were present of which ten (10) were members.

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

•The minutes of November 2004 meeting were accepted as published in the January 2005 newsletter.

•Tommy Thomas, the Chapter Treasurer, gave the Treasurer's report. As of January 12, 2005, the balance is $1321.99. Motion was made and approved to accept the Treasurer's Report.

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 site is available. To access the SPARTA Web site, point your Web browser to this site: http://www.spartanc.org. Please send any comments or suggestions about the Web site to Mike Lockey. Be sure to check the site every once in a while to see any new or changed information.

•Brad Carson reminded everyone to leave the conference room clean.


NEW BUSINESS

•Future Speakers and Topics:
(subject to change)

Feb. 2005: ??? - Jim Horne of Lowes
Mar 2005: SHARE Recap - multiple speakers
Apr 2005: TBA

If you have suggestions about speakers and topics, contact Duane Reaugh.

•Thanks to Tommy Thomas of LabCorp for hosting the January meeting.

•The February 22nd SPARTA meeting will be held at LabCorp in the RTP.

•Food for the February meeting will be subs, drinks and dessert.

•2005 dues are due ($20 annually)

•2005 Officer nominations are coming up.

•The SPARTA mailing list has been update and corrected.

•The business portion of the meeting ended at 7:40 p.m.

•Bill Reeder of IBM talked about Linux on IBM zSeries. Some of the topics Bill discussed were:

He started with Linux in 1992
- One needs to define the business problem
- Look at the risk and the financial management
- Look at VM as the BIOS for Linux
- Look at the applications fit to migrate to Linux
Best Fit - Good Business Case - fits classic zSeries, shorten path length
Good Fit - Simplification of the support model, good TCO, politics are good
Difficult Fits - Candidates that make you say: you have got to be kidding

- Best Fit Examples
WebSphere MQ Series
DB2 Connect
CICS Transaction Gateway
IMS Connect for Java
WebSphere and JAVA applications development
Applications requiring top end disaster recovery model
CommServer and Communications Controller for Linux
LDAP security services
IBI Web Focus

- Good Fit Examples
Oracle Database
UDB (DB2)
Informix, (IDS)
WebSphere Application Server (WAS)
Apache web serving
SAMBA
Network Infrastructure, FTP, NFS, DNS etc.,
E-Mail solutions
- Difficult Fit Examples
Applications that have not yet ported their application to run on Linux on zSeries
Applications that by design run at VERY High sustained utilization (over 95%
Stand-Alone single applications as the only zSeries Linux applications
Applications that are to internally sensitive to try and move
A more extensive list of bad fits
ISV software running and supported for Linux on zSeries:
http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/zseries/os/linux/apps/all.html
IBM software running and supported to run under Linux on zSeries
http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/zseries/os/linux/software.html
Bill Reeder can be reached at breeder@us.ibm.com or 286-587-2152

The meeting ended at 9:15 p.m.

Treasurer’s Report for February 2005

contributed by Tommy Thomas

The balance in the account is $ 1253.56 as of January 31, 2005.

Financial Report
2/01/2004 through 01/31/2005

Items of Interest

SPARTA Schedule and Menu for 2005

contributed by Tommy Thomas and Chris Blackshire

Feb 22 - Subs
Mar 22 - BBQ
Apr 26 - Pizza
May 23 - Chicken
Jun 28 - Subs
Jul 26 - BBQ
Aug 30 - Pizza
Sep 27 - Chicken
Oct 25 - Subs
Nov 29 - BBQ

What’s New in IBM’s z/OS 1.6

contributed by Ed Webb

We've discussed z/OS 1.6 Installation over the past few months, but I'm not sure we talked much about What's New or Interesting about 1.6. Here's some items we've run across so far (our Production system successfully went live on z/OS 1.6 on Wed. night, Feb. 9, 2005):

1. ISPF enhancements:

Inline REXX within ISPF panels

Edit now has a COLS primary command that leaves a column numbering line at the top of the data as you scroll just like COLS in Browse has worked for years.

Edit has a HIDE command to remove excluded lines messages from the display

Edit's CUT command now support X and NX to choose which lines to put in its clipboard.

Blocksize 0 (system-determined blocksize) is supported for ISPLOG, ISPLIST, ISPCTLx, ISPLSTx, and ISPWRKx data sets.

SRCHFOR primary command in member lists to allow a search of members in the list using the SuperC utility (like the free PDS command's FIND : function.

And the Move/Copy Utility now moves or copies aliases automatically when associated members are selected via the member list.

2. Unix System Services

ISHELL provides option to display permissions in rwxrwxrwx format as well as octal format

ISHELL supports wildcards on the directory list

3. Base Control Program (BCP)

SMF provides buffer constraint relief with BUFSIZMAX so the SMF record buffer can be as large as 1024 megabytes.

Support for greater than 16 CPs per z/OS 1.6 image.

For more information about what's new in z/OS 1.6, look at the z/OS 1.6 Introduction and Planning Guide in the z/OS System Level books at http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/zseries/zos/bkserv/r6pdf/zsys.html.


OS Alternatives (BSD vs. Linux)

contributed by Chris Blackshire

OS Alternatives - A Scholarly Tradition

BSD stands for Berkeley Software Distribution, a collection of software developed at the University of California at Berkeley. Originally intended as an add-on package for early versions of AT&T's Unix, BSD gradually evolved into a complete, highly sophisticated Unix-like operating system-the first to incorporate built-in networking.

Fussed over by perfectionist academics and then torture-tested by generations of brutal college students, BSD is perhaps the most robust, secure, and reliable of operating systems. It is common for a BSD-based operating system to run for years without maintenance or rebooting. And because it was developed at public expense, BSD was made completely free to all comers-including software developers who wanted to build it into commercial products. Networking code from BSD is at the heart of nearly every modern operating system, including Linux, OS/2, and even every version of Windows since Windows 95.

If the BSDs are so good, why aren't they making the headlines, as Linux is? The most important reason is cultural. Many Linux developers see themselves as software revolutionaries. But members of the academic community, where the BSDs have their roots, tended to focus more on results rather than getting the word out. The BSDs also have a dedicated following among system administrators and ISPs, who often prefer to treat their favorite BSD as a secret weapon rather than publicizing the fact that they are using the OS.

As a result, not many people realize that versions of BSD form the foundations of major Internet sites such as Yahoo! and also power highly reliable embedded systems such as the IBM InterJet Internet appliance and Maxtor's network storage servers. One of the BSDs - NetBSD - has the distinction of being the most portable operating system in the world, running on more than 64 different central processing units and hundreds of brands and models of computers.

Today, there are five popular BSD operating systems. Three of them - FreeBSD (www.freebsd.org), NetBSD (www.netbsd.org), and OpenBSD (www.openbsd.org) - are covered by the BSD license, which makes the operating systems and their source code free for use by anyone for any purpose The other two - BSD/OS and Mac OS X (www.apple.com/macosx) - are commercial products that build upon the open-source BSD code and offer unique advantages and distinctive technology. In this article, we'll look at the no-cost BSD versions.

For a discussion of BSD/OS and Mac OS X, and the advantage of the BSD license over the Linux General Public License, see the sidebar "More about BSD" on our <PC Magazine> Web site (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1167403,00.asp).


Humor


The Word UP

Contributed by Chris Blackshire

You lovers of the English language might enjoy this

There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that word is "UP."

It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP?

At a meeting, why does a topic come UP? Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report?

We call UP our friends And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver, we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car.

At other times the little word has real special meaning. People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses.

To be dressed is one thing but to be dressed UP is special. And this UP is confusing:

A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP.

We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night. We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP!

To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions.

If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more.

When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP. When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP. When it rains, it wets UP the earth.

When it doesn't rain for a while, things dry UP.

One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP, for now my time is UP, so.............

Time to shut UP.....!

Oh...one more thing:
What is the first thing you do in the morning & the last thing you do at night? U P

Membership Information

Don’t Forget the Next SPARTA Meeting

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

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 Tommy Thomas. Tommy will escort you to the conference room.

Free Food: Subs, Drinks, Dessert

Program:

Mainframe Limitations

Speaker:

Jim Horne of Lowes Companies

SPARTA News
P.O. Box 13194
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-3194











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