SPARTA News October 2005

October 2005

SPARTA Chapter President’s Corner

by Brad Carson

I want to thank Duane Reaugh and DTS Software for hosting our meeting last month on such short notice. We had to go with the change of venue last month because of the need for handling a conference call with Mike Bledsoe of Computer Associates. Mike gave us a presentation on the upcoming changes to CA-7 and the integration with CA's Workload Control Center. Mike managed to give a good presentation even with the added pressure of having to work around Hurricane Rita (he is based in Houston, Texas). In the future I can see us doing more of this style of presentation.

At DHTS our z/OS 1.6 system is settling in fine. We had a follow-up DR test on Oct. 7th, 8th, and 9th in order to complete the test that was halted back in August. This time we didn't send anyone up to Sterling Forest, just the tapes. After some initial connectivity issues we managed to get our part of the test completed in four and a half hours. This test was for 48 hours and we managed to restore all the DB2/IMS data this time (with only a few issues). The testing went well and included a side trip to the Rolling Stones concert on the evening of the 8th! Our PLI/LE conversion is still ongoing but has slowed down a little bit due to a manpower shortage for testing. We are now on track to convert the CICS regions on October 30th. Batch is being handled one job at a time and is moving forward.

Over at DDA I'm still working on setting up IMS 8.1 for their application but haven't had much time to work on it during the last month. I had to take a small detour to get V5.1 of the IBM Debug Tool running in batch and CICS. It can now handle assembler code as well as COBOL/PLI/C code. Now that Debug is running, I'll head back to working on IMS.

This month our speaker will be John Mycroft from Cobbs Mill Consulting to talk to us about DumpMarvel. I look forward to seeing you all at LabCorp on the 25th.

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


Future Speakers
(subject to change)


Oct. 25 - DumpMarvel by John Mycroft of Cobbs Mill Consulting
Nov. 29 - RACF Update by IBM
Dec. 27 - No meeting. Happy Holidays!

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 Ron Pimblett by phone as noted below.

2005-2006 SPARTA
Board of Directors

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

Ron Pimblett - Vice President
Dignus, LLC 919-676-0847
8354 Six Forks Road
Raleigh, NC 27615

Mike Lockey - Secretary
Guilford Co. Information Services 336-641-6235
201 N. Eugene St.
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
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 2005 CBT Tape Online

The directory and files from the latest CBT tape V469 (dated July 17, 2005) 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 September 27th, 2005 Meeting

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

•The meeting was held at the DTS Software “firehouse”.

•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 business portion of the meeting was suspended at 7:30 p.m. so the that the speaker could begin his webinar presentation. An outline of the presentation is at the end of these minutes as usual.

The speaker was scheduled to be onsite but could not travel here because of Hurricane Rita.

•The business portion of the meeting resumed at 8:50 p.m.

•The minutes of August 2005 meeting were accepted as published in the September 2005 newsletter.

•Tommy Thomas, the Chapter Treasurer, gave the Treasurer's report. As of September 26, 2005, the balance is $1665.23. 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 keep the conference room clean.


NEW BUSINESS

•Future Speakers and Topics:
(subject to change)


October 2005 DumpMarvel by John Mycroft of Cobbs Mill Consulting
November 2005 RACF by IBM
December 2005 No Meeting

If you have suggestions about speakers and topics, contact Ron Pimblett.

•Thanks to Duane Reaugh of DTS Software for hosting the September meeting.

•The October 26th SPARTA meeting will be held at LabCorp in the RTP.

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

•There was no other new business.

•The business portion of the meeting ended at 9:00 p.m.

•Mike Bledsoe of Computer Associates spoke about updates to CA Job Management Products.

Some of the topics Mike discussed were:

Unicenter CA-7 r11

Job Optimization Definition

Fully automated and orchestrated execution of business processes
Across the enterprise
Integration of diverse processes
r11 Job Optimization Strategy
Centralized, role-based administration and control using state of the art visualization
Business oriented management
Dynamic placement of workload
Flexible configuration that supports simple to complex computing environments

r11 Message

What's new in r11?
Unicenter Workload Control Center
Centralized Administration, Monitoring and Control of the enterprise
Integrated Event Management
Job Status Console
Graphical views of workflows
Web based reporting

Unicenter CA-7 Job Management
Scalability improvements
Fully integrated into EJM Command Center
Enhanced Disaster Recovery capabilities
Cross Platform High Availability
Unicenter Service Desk Integration

Unicenter CA-7

Scalability
Multiple Copies of Unicenter CA-7 per LPAR
Disaster recovery
Allows clients to start in "Disaster Recovery mode
e-mail notifications
Unicenter ServicePlus desk Integration
Global Job Name Rename
Expanded eTrust CA-Examine Auditing Integration

Unicenter Universal Job Management Agent (UUJMA) r3.1

Distribution of the full Event Agent (for UNIX and Linux)
Failover support with High Availability Server
Optional ENF support
UNIX/Linux installation of UUJMA
Windows wizard installation of UUJMA
Workload Control Center

A demo of CA Enterprise Job Manager was provided.


The meeting ended at 9:00 p.m.

Treasurer’s Report for October 2005

contributed by Tommy Thomas

The balance in the account is $ 1593.06 as of October 18, 2005.

Financial Report
3/01/2004 through 10/18/2005

Items of Interest

SPARTA Schedule and Menu for 2005

contributed by Tommy Thomas and Chris Blackshire

Oct. 25 - Subs
Nov. 29 - BarBQ


Free z/OS Software - Get It Now!

contributed by Ed Webb

Two recent software products have been significantly updated and you should get both of them (they're free!):

PDS 8.6 takes a major step forward with PDS/Extended support. Now PDSE's are treated just like ordinary PDS's with a couple of minor restrictions. The Load Module MAP command cannot map Load Modules in a PDSE; it just reports size. HIST can show CSECTs though.

Download PDS 8.6 from http://www.cbttape.org/updates.htm now (it's file 182) and pick up the REVIEW command and its affiliates in file 134 while you're there.

SMP/E 3.4 (HMP1G00) is a very significant release and can be installed and run on z/OS 1.4 through 1.6 and is shipped as part of z/OS 1.7. You may have to license (no-charge) the separate product if you want it for your pre-1.7 system. Try ordering the CBPDO via ShopzSeries and if it wants to go to the Order Center instead of Manufacturing, call your IBM software rep (a third party like Mainline in our case) and get them to "license only (no ship)" your site. Once they confirm licensing, you should be able to order the CBPDO and download it via ShopzSeries.

With SMP/E 3.4, you can order your service directly from IBM via a RECEIVE ORDER job on your mainframe (firewall and security guys willing). There's a little bit of RACF Digital Certificate work to do (contact me directly for details; they're in the SMP/E 3.4 User's Guide as well) and you'll be RECEIVEing PTFs with almost no effort right away. It's a great way to keep RSU service at your fingertips on a scheduled basis.

One caution with SMP/E 3.4, you must also have IBM SDK for z/OS Java 2 Technology Edition, v1.4 (5655-I56) or an available ICSF crypto environment for the Internet Service Retrieval function to succeed. But Java 1.4 is free!


Redbooks of Interest

contributed by Ed Webb

TCP/IP Tutorial and Technical Overview
Revised: September 30, 2005 ISBN: 0130676101 980 pages. Explore the book online at http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/gg243376.html.


The IBM Systems Agenda: iB(M)

contributed by Ed Webb

Interesting overview of IBM strategy, sorta AS/400 (iSeries) focused but only slightly, in this article at http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh101005-story01.html


Humor


Can You Figure These Out?

contributed by Chris Blackshire

1. A murderer is condemned to death. He has to choose between three rooms. The first is full of raging fires, the second is full of assassins with loaded guns, and the third is full of lions that haven't eaten in 3 years. Which room is safest for him?


2. A woman shoots her husband. Then she holds him under water for over 5 minutes. Finally, she hangs him. But 5 minutes later they both go out together and enjoy a wonderful dinner together. How can this be?


3. What is black when you buy it, red when you use it, and gray when you throw it away?


4. Can you name three consecutive days without using the words Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, or Sunday?


5. This is an unusual paragraph. I'm curious how quickly you can find out what is so unusual about it. It looks so plain you would think nothing was wrong with it. In fact, nothing is wrong with it! It is unusual though. Study it, and think about it, but you still may not find anything odd. But if you work at it a bit, you might find out. Try to do so without any coaching!




ANSWERS:


1. The third. Lions that haven't eaten in three years are dead.

2. The woman was a photographer. She shot a picture of her husband, developed it and hung it up to dry.

3. Charcoal

4. Sure you can: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow!

5. The letter "e," which is the most common letter in the English language, does not appear once in the long paragraph.


An Old Farmer’s Advice

contributed by Chris Blackshire

•Your fences need to be horse-high, pig-tight, and bull-strong.
•Keep skunks and bankers and lawyers at a distance.
•Life is simpler when you plow around the stump.
•A bumble bee is considerably faster than a John Deere tractor.
•Words that soak into your ears are whispered ... not yelled.
•Meanness don't jes' happen overnight.
•Forgive your enemies. It messes up their heads.
•Do not corner something that you know is meaner than you.
•It don't take a very big person to carry a grudge.
•You cannot unsay a cruel word.
•Every path has a few puddles.
•When you wallow with pigs, expect to get dirty.
•The best sermons are lived, not preached.
•Most of the stuff people worry about ain't never gonna happen anyway.
•Don't judge folks by their relatives.
•Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
•Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you'll enjoy it a second time.
•Don't interfere with somethin' that ain't botherin' you none.
•Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance.
•If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop diggin'.
•Sometimes you get, and sometimes you get got.
•The biggest troublemaker you'll probably ever have to deal with, watches you from the mirror every mornin'.
•Always drink upstream from the herd.
•Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
•Lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier than puttin' it back in.
•If you get to thinkin' you're a person of some influence, try orderin' somebody else's dog around.
•Live simply. Love generously. Care deeply. Speak kindly. Leave the rest to God.

Membership Information

Don’t Forget the Next SPARTA Meeting

Tuesday, October 25, 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:

DumpMarvel

Speaker:

John Mycroft of Cobbs Mill Consulting

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











First Class Postage

Phillips Software