SPARTA News March 2006

March 2006

SPARTA President’s Corner

by Brad Carson

March is here and so is the roller coaster ride with the weather. We have 80’s one day and 40’s on another. It’s a wonder I haven’t had more sinus problems than I do. Spring will be here soon and all the pine pollen to go with it! I enjoyed our visit last month from the LRS folks, and the meal provided by Bill was great.

We have finally managed to get all of the CICS regions at DHTS converted to LE runtime. This has been a long (looooooong) project to move from the old PLI (circa 1995) runtime support to LE. We had two months of testing all the CICS applications and still had to delay the cutover because of application support. Of course after the cutover every error or abend was blamed on LE. We had an AOR region go short on storage and LE was blamed as expected. The real issue here was bad data being passed on a TD queue into an assembler problem that caused it to loop and get storage (over 60 MB). After this was pointed out to the support staff, we heard “Oh, we need to fix that”. Such is life in IS. Next we are planning on removing the old PLI libraries from the LINKLIST and see how much batch has not been converted/tested. I’ll let you know how this goes next month.

I was able to place the updated MainView into production and now we are working on migrating to the new MV alarm manager. BMC has moved the alarm manager from a separate task to the CAS task with the definitions stored in USS directory. We were looking for this new alarm manager since you can now setup the alarm definitions to handle a temporary spike and not send false alarms. After playing with it on our test LPAR, it looks like the new alarm definitions are stored as XML files in the directories. Hmm, interesting.

Over at DDA I’ve gotten Fault Analyzer configured into all the CICS regions. They have liked having this available when debugging client modifications to their code. One other thing they had me do is setup one of the DEMO CICS regions with the 3270 Web Bridge so they can see how their application looks on the Web. It’s a start for them to move their applications into the wonderful world of the Web.

This month our speakers will be our own Ed Webb and Duane Reaugh to talk to us about their trip to SHARE in Seattle. I look forward to seeing you all at LabCorp on the 28th.

P.S. Subs, drinks, and dessert will be provided.


Time to pay your $20 annual dues!


Future Speakers
(subject to change)


Mar. 28 - SHARE Conference Reports by Ed Webb of SAS and Duane Reaugh of DTS
Apr. 25 - Softbase
May 23 - IOF from Triangle Systems

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 e-Mailings

The SPARTA policy is to e-mail a monthly notice to our SPARTA-L Group. The newsletter is posted to the website about five (5) days before each meeting so you can prepare. The SPARTA-L Group is maintained by Mike Lockey at (336) 641-6235; if you have corrections or problems receiving your meeting notice, contact Mike.

February 2006 CBT Tape Online

The directory and files from the latest CBT tape V471 (dated February 28, 2006) 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 February 28th, 2006 Meeting

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

•Twelve (12) people were present; ten (10) were members.

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

•The minutes of January 2006 meeting were accepted as published in the February 2006 newsletter.

•Tommy Thomas, the Chapter Treasurer, gave the Treasurer's report. As of February 15, 2006, the balance is $1359.11. Motion was made and approved to accept the Treasurer's Report as published in the February 2006 newsletter.

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 URL: 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)

March 2006 SHARE Conference overview
April 2006 Softbase
May 2006 IOF


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

•The March 28, 2006 SPARTA meeting will be held at LabCorp in RTP.

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

•It is time to pay your annual dues. Annual dues are $20 and should be given to Tommy Thomas.

•Brad Carson talked about forming a Nominations Committee for the SPARTA Board of Directors. A Nominations Committee would not be necessary if the current Board of Directors decided to run for re-election; the current Board of Directors will run for re-election this year. If you’re are interested in a position on the SPARTA of Directors, see Brad Carson.

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

•Thanks to Bill Peiffer of LRS for providing the food.

•The business portion of the meeting ended at 7:45 p.m.

•Tammy Powers and Danny Ross of Levi, Ray and Shoup, Inc. (LRS) spoke about "Output Management for z/OS and Open Systems Environments".

Tammy was the main speaker and spoke about the following topics:

Agenda

VPS overview and enhanced features

PageCenter report viewing/archiving

VPSX overview and features

VPS - Delivering Output
Reprint/Recovery
VPS/TCPIP
Delivery via TCP/IP
Bidirectional Internet Printing (BIP)
VPS/Secure - Secure Printing Across TCP/IP
VPS - AFP Conversions
VPS - XEROX Conversions
VPS/LCDS - Production Printing - XEROX
VPS & PRISMA - Production Printing - Oce

VPS/Email
Distributing Output via Email inline text or attachment

VMCF - DMCF
VPS and DRS Management
Web Interface
LRS/NET

PageCenter - report viewing/archiving
Archiving
Archive Design
Archive Features
Action List
AFP Support
Object Viewing
Navigation and Searching
Email - Links and Attachments

VPSX - Enterprise Output Management for Open Systems Environments
What are the problems we hear about with Open Systems printing?
What is VPSX?
What Platforms is VPSX Supported on?
Key Features
Web Interface Preview
Advanced technologies Used in VPSX
Data Capture
Data Filters
LRS Datastream Transform Filters
Core Functionality Review
VPSX Architecture
VPSX
LRS/ServerX
LRS/NetX
System Architecture
How does VPSX fit in the VSE/VM (zLinux) Environment?
VPSX - Summary

Open Discussion

The meeting ended at 9:15 p.m.

Treasurer’s Report for March 2006

contributed by Tommy Thomas

The balance in the account is $ 1048.11 as of February 28, 2006.

Financial Report
3/01/2005 through 02/28/2006

Items of Interest

SPARTA Schedule and Menu for 2006

contributed by Tommy Thomas and Chris Blackshire

Mar. 28 - Subs
Apr. 25 - Pizza
May 23 - Chicken
June - Subs
July - BarBQ
Aug. - Pizza
Sept. - Chicken
Oct. - Subs
Nov. - BarBQ


Does Your Installation Want to Be an IBM ESP site?

contributed by Ed Webb

IBM needs more z/OS Early Support Program (ESP) sites. You’d get an early ServerPac (in the June-July timeframe) and have to commit to near-production implementation before General Availability in September, but you get personal attention during your implementation.

Interested? Contact Ramu Mohan via e-mail at rmohan@us.ibm.com.


A Few Tidbits from SHARE in Seattle

contributed by Ed Webb

Using VSAM KSDS? Then enable the Index Trap! Per Mark Thomen of IBM at his Best Practices for Catalog and VSAM session 3057 on Friday morning at SHARE, you should issue this command now: VARY SMS,MONDS(IGWVSAM.BASE.INDEX.TRAP),ON and it will prevent broken indexes. Just be sure that APARs OA03570 (Base VSAM) and OW55096 (for VSAM RLS) are applied. Mark assured us that the overhead is minimal and the reward is great. With these APARs, the function is available on z/OS 1.4, 1.5, and 1.6 as well as 1.7.

And check out the JES2 Project page at the SHARE website (http://www.share.org/Volunteer_Center/programs/jes2_project.cfm) for links to great JES2 1.7 migration presentations and user experiences handouts.


z/OS 1.7 Migration Hints

contributed by Ed Webb

Marna Walle of IBM frequently presents z/OS Migration sessions at SHARE. Here’s a migration summary article she wrote for Mainframe Extra.

Recent Redbooks and Drafts of Interest

contributed by Ed Webb

Redbooks

UNIX System Services z/OS Version 1 Release 7 Implementation
Published: March 3, 2006 ISBN: 073849609X 600 pages Explore the book online at http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg247035.html

Drafts

Communications Server for z/OS V1R7 TCP/IP, Volume 3
Revised: March, 10, 2006 More details are available at http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redpieces/abstracts/sg247171.html

IBM System z9 109 Configuration Setup
Revised: March, 8, 2006 More details are available at http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redpieces/abstracts/sg247203.html

z/OS 1.7 Breaks SAS IOM or Connect Spawner Sessions

contributed by Ed Webb

In case you missed it in the February SPARTA News: An easily overlooked IBM change to the USS TSO command services environment causes SAS Connect or IOM Spawned sessions to fail. See this TechNote for details and resolution: http://support.sas.com/techsup/unotes/SN/016/016738.html


A Canadian Discovers A Southern Season

contributed by Ron Pimblett

My daughter visited me last week; she is planning to continue her education at UNC in Chapel Hill. Someone at the school recommended that she visit a place called Southern Season, a shop just off 15-501 near the school. Probably everyone knows about this place but I went along with her to visit the store and WOW is all I can say. Never seen anything like it. They have displays of every kind of Jam, Wine, Coffee, Chocolate, Nuts, Pickles and on and on. So here is a description from their web site that, if you can negotiate the pictures, might be of interest to local SPARTA natives.

The Story of Southern Season

A Southern Season's original 800 sq. ft. store opened in 1975 as a tiny coffee roastery and had one employee, owner Michael Cooper Barefoot. Driven by an intense love of food and a deep respect for quality, along with a healthy measure of down-home horse sense, Michael set his vision on introducing specialty foods to the Research Triangle area of North Carolina.

Initially operating on something less than a shoestring budget, projections required average daily receipts of $312 to keep the doors open. Posted hours during the first year were 9 a.m. - 9 p.m., but the shop never closed until sales had reached $312, sometimes past midnight.

Customer enthusiasm and demand for a more extensive selection of gourmet specialty food items prompted a move to its larger Eastgate Shopping Center location in 1978. Numerous expansions have occurred since, including a major 1992 renovation which expanded the Eastgate store to 28,000 sq. ft.

For more about A Southern Season, check out their website at http://www.southernseason.com/

Humor


Is It Male or Female?

contributed by Chris Blackshire

You may not know this, but many nonliving things have a gender:

1) Ziploc Bags are Male, because they hold everything in, but you can see right through them.

2) Copiers are Female, because once turned off; it takes a while to warm them up again. It's an effective reproductive device if the right buttons are pushed, but can wreak havoc if the wrong buttons are pushed.

3) A Tire is Male, because it goes bald and it's often over-inflated.

4) A Hot Air Balloon is Male, because, to get it to go anywhere, you have to light a fire under it, and of course, there's the hot air part.

5) Sponges are Female, because they're soft, squeezable and retain water.

6) A Web Page is Female, because it's always getting hit on.

7) A Subway is Male, because it uses the same old lines to pick people up.

8) An Hourglass is Female, because over time, the weight shifts to the bottom.

9) A Hammer is Male, because it hasn't changed much over the last 5,000 years, but it's handy to have around.

10) A Remote Control is Female. Ha! You thought it'd be male, didn't you? But consider this - it gives a man pleasure, he'd be lost without it, and while he doesn't always know the right buttons to push, he keeps trying!


Old Age and Treachery

contributed by Chris Blackshire

A wealthy old lady decides to go on a photo safari in Africa, taking her faithful aged poodle named Cuddles, along for the company.

One day the poodle starts chasing butterflies and before long, Cuddles discovers that she's lost. Wandering about, she notices a leopard heading rapidly in her direction with the intention of having lunch. The old poodle thinks, "Oh, oh! I'm in deep doo-doo now!"

Noticing some bones on the ground close by, she immediately settles down to chew on the bones with her back to the approaching cat.

Just as the leopard is about to leap, the old poodle exclaims loudly, "Boy, that was one delicious leopard! I wonder if there are any more around here."

Hearing this, the young leopard halts his attack in mid-strike, a look of terror comes over him and he slinks a way into the trees.

"Whew!", says the leopard, "That was close! That old poodle nearly had me"

Meanwhile, a monkey who had been watching the whole scene from a nearby tree, figures he can put this knowledge to good use and trade it for protection from the leopard.

So off he goes, but the old poodle sees him heading after the leopard with great speed, and figures that something must be up.

The monkey soon catches up with the leopard, spills the beans and strikes a deal for himself with the leopard.

The young leopard is furious at being made a fool of and says, "Here, monkey, hop on my back and see what's going to happen to that conniving canine!"

Now, the old poodle sees the leopard coming with the monkey on his back and thinks, "What am I going to do now?", but instead of running, the dog sits down with her back to her attackers, pretending she hasn't seen them yet, and just when they get close enough to hear, the old poodle says:

"Where's that damn monkey? I sent him off an hour ago to bring me another leopard!"

Moral of this story.... Don't mess with old guys... age and treachery will always overcome youth and skill!

Bulls--t and brilliance only come with age and experience!

Membership Information

Don’t Forget the Next SPARTA Meeting

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

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:

SHARE Winter 2006 Conference Reports

Speaker:

Duane Reaugh of DTS Software and Ed Webb of SAS Institute

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



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