SPARTA News October 2011

October 2011

SPARTA President’s Corner

by Brad Carson

October is here and that means the nice cool fall weather is here too. We are getting ready for Halloween at the house. With it falling on a Monday my wife and I are expecting more than 100 trick or treaters to visit us. It’s always fun to see how the small kids get dressed up for this.

Last month Ed Webb and Tom Schwartz talked to all of us about their visit to SHARE in Orlando. I learned a good deal about what is coming in z/OS 1.13 which is what we will be installing beginning in late January. I want to complete our DB2 V10 installation and z/VM 6.1 work first.

Our DB2 V10 migration continues to move along, we have all DB2’s except for the Billing QA and PROD subsystems converted to V8 compatibility mode. We are planning to do the QA subsystem on Halloween day. That’s the last subsystem to do on our QAAD LPAR. It will probably be December before we can do the production subsystem on our PROD LPAR, but that still gives us two months before the single version charging expires. When we converted the production subsystem for the web based applications, we have seen better than 15% reduction in the amount of CPU needed for that subsystem. This is a very good improvement and I hope we see similar numbers when we convert the billing subsystem to V10.

About 15 years late, we have finally completed the conversion from DB2 plans to packages. This was a big effort and we “tripped” over a lot of past issues while getting this completed. SCLM is now promoting packages instead of plans and we are retiring our old dynamic plan exit in CICS. One less thing to worry about during CICS migrations (which 4.2 is on our horizon). Production has been running without any -905 errors since this past Sunday, so this is a good sign for us.

This month our speaker will be John Eells from IBM (via WEBEX) to talk to us about what is coming in z/OS 1.13. See you at LabCorp on the 25th!


Future Speakers
(subject to change)


Oct. 25 z/OS 1.13 by John Eells of IBM (via WebEx)
Nov. 29 (at SAS) ITRM or z/OS R13 Experience
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.

2011-2012 SPARTA
Board of Directors

Brad Carson - President
LabCorp 336-436-8294
3060 S. Church St.
Burlington, NC 27215

Ron Pimblett - Vice President
MDI DataSystems 919-426-6518

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
3060 S. Church St. 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 Brad Carson; if you have corrections or problems receiving your meeting notice, contact Brad at 336-436-8294.

June 2011 “CBT Tape” Shareware Online

The directory and files from the latest CBT tape V482 (dated June 23, 2011) are available from www.cbttape.org.

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

Minutes of the September 27, 2011 Meeting

•Meeting was called to order at 7:00 PM by Brad Carson, the Chapter President.
•The meeting was held at LabCorp in RTP, N.C.
•Thirteen (13) people were present of which all were members.
•Everyone in the room introduced themselves, told where they worked, and briefly described their job functions.
•The minutes of the July 2011 meeting were approved as published in the August 2011 newsletter.
•Tommy Thomas, the Chapter Treasurer, gave the Treasurer's Report. As of August 9, 2011, the balance is $985.25. Motion was made and approved to accept the Treasurer's Report as published in the 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 page is available. To access the SPARTA Web page, point your Web browser to this site: http://www.spartanc.org. Please send any comments or suggestions about the Web page to Mike Lockey. Be sure to check the Web page every once in a while to see any new or changed information.

•Future Speakers and Topics (subject to change based on internal politics, budget, the weather):

- Aug. 30 Durham Bulls
- Sept. 27 SHARE Updates, Presenters Ed Webb and Tom Schwartz
- Oct. 25 TBA
- Nov. 29 (at SAS) Topic is TBD
- Dec. 27: No meeting

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

•Brad reminded everyone to keep the conference room clean.
•The October SPARTA meeting will be October 25 at LabCorp in RTP.
•Food for the October meeting will be chicken.

NEW BUSINESS

•Thanks to LabCorp for hosting the meeting.
•If you have any Listserver issues, contact Brad with any e-mail address changes.
•The business portion of the meeting ended at 8:00 PM.
•Two Members gave summaries of the summer 2011 SHARE Conference Session Reports:

Tom Schwartz of LUMINEX
Ed Webb of SAS
 
The Session Number and Session Descriptions that Tom reviewed were:
 
Orlando in August (hot)
LUMINEX Booth Duty (booth 300)
Modern Mainframe Virtual Tape (5 sessions)
 
- 09857 Intro to FICON and SAN
- 10080 Part 2 of Intro to FICON and SAN
- 09368 FICON Performance
- 10079 Part 2 of FICON Performance
- 09934 Evolution of the System z Channel
- 09864 zSeries FICON and FCP Fabrics - Intermixing Best Practices
- 09931 Buffer to Buffer Credits
- 09874 EMC – Tape on Disk with Deduplication
- 10135 EMC – DLm 6000 Introduction
- 09969 Virtual Tape Vendor Panel
- 09734 z/OS Management Facility Overview
- 09339 Innovation DP on Consolidation, Dedupe, Migration
- 09636 GDPS overview
- 09884 & 10085 Linux mgmt for mainframers
- 09887 Setting up and using MTL
- 09232 SMS/RMM Report Generator
- 09765 Dark Side of Connectivity
- 9790 Bill Cross: 6 months into retirement
 
The Session Number and Session Descriptions that Ed reviewed were:
 
SHARE 117 August 7-12, 2011 in Orlando, FL - Attendance review - holding up well
SHARE 118 March 11-16, 2012 in Atlanta, GA
SHARE 119 August 5-10, 2012 in Anaheim, CA
Best Sessions (*) - Note that sessions are now 5 digits long
 
- nnnnn SHARE Opening and Keynote (Glenn Anderson)
- 10042 MVS Program Opening
- 09698 Core Technologies Opening Session
- 09520 Service Request to Replace ETR (*)
- 09949 DFSMS z/OS 1.13 Overview (*)
- 09718 JES2 Product Update and Latest Status
- 10091 New Era of Smarter Computing
- 09939 What We’ve Done For You Lately With PDSE
- 09721 z/OS Unix System Services Latest Status and New Features
- 09717 z/OS 1.13 JES2 New Functions, Features, Migration Actions (*)
- 09727 System Trace
- 09802 Successful Practices for Installing and Rolling Out z/OS Maintenance (*)
- 09701 Migrating to z/OS 1.13: Part 1 of 2
- 09702 Migrating to z/OS 1.13: Part 2 of 2
- 09683 I/O AutoConfig with IBM zEnterprise Using HCD
- 09737 z/OSMF User Experience
- 09736 z/OSMF Roundtable
- 09729 z/OS Parallel Sysplex Update
- 09940 IEBCOPY - Teaching Old Dog New Tricks
- 09807 PFA Customer Experience (Sam Knutson)
- 09722 z/OS 1.13 Early User Experience
- 09800 PARMLIB Successful Practices - User Experiences
- 09723 z/OS 1.13 Sysprog Goody Bag
- 10041 z/OS Core Tech Free-For-All
- 09675 System Programmer Goody Bag
- 09588 Cheryl’s Hot Flashes #26
- 09677 Bit Bucket x’29’
 
Get GA22-7499-19 (z/OS V1R13.0 Migration book)
 
Presentations can be found on http://www.share.org. SHARE proceedings are now open to all.

• Meeting ended at 9:10 PM.

Treasurer’s Report for October 2011

contributed by Tommy Thomas

The balance in the account is $921.53 as of October 13, 2011.

Financial Report
3/01/2011 through 10/13/2011

Items of Interest


SPARTA Schedule and Menu for 2011

contributed by Tommy Thomas and Chris Blackshire

Oct. 25 - Chicken
Nov. 29 - Subs
Dec 27 - No Meeting, Happy Holidays!


Southern CMG November Meetings Announced

contributed by Ed Webb

The agendas for the two November SCMG meetings are available. These are really fine programs!

Check them out! Where else can you get a great one-day program and lunch for $25?

Richmond:  Thursday, November 3, Northrop Grumman data center facility

Raleigh:   Friday, November 18, SAS campus

Please use the following links for agendas and registration.  

RICHMOND:

http://regions.cmg.org/regions/scmg/fall_11/richmond/meeting.htm

$25 until October 31.
$35 after October 31.

RALEIGH:

http://regions.cmg.org/regions/scmg/fall_11/raleigh/meeting.htm

$25 until November 15
$35 after November 15


Apple Pumping Over $750 million into NC Datacenter

contributed by Ed Webb

Check out this article from Electronista about Apple’s North Carolina datacenter expenditures.

http://www.electronista.com/articles/11/10/14/may.create.massive.barrier.to.competition/



zBX (Finally) Gets Windows

contributed by Ed Webb

IBM announced on October 12, 2011 that its zEnterprise system will run Windows-based blades in the zBX. For details check out this announcement:

http://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?subtype=ca&infotype=an&appname=iSource&supplier=897&letternum=ENUS111-167



Google’s Platform - Disaster in the Making?

contributed by Ed Webb

Why Amazon delivers cloud and Google cannot is explained in this very interesting and lengthy rant from a current Google (and ex-Amazon) employee.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3101876


Humor


October Trivia

contributed by Chris Blackshire

Q: Why do men's clothes have buttons on the right while women's clothes have buttons on the left?

A: When buttons were invented, they were very expensive and worn primarily by the rich. Since most people are right-handed, it is easier to push buttons on the right through holes on the left. Because wealthy women were dressed by maids, dressmakers put the buttons on the maid's right! And that's where women's buttons have remained since.

Q: Why do ships and aircraft use 'mayday' as their call for help?

A: This comes from the French word m'aidez -meaning 'help me' -- and is pronounced, approximately, 'mayday.'

Q: Why are zero scores in tennis called 'love'?

A: In France, where tennis became popular, round zero on the scoreboard looked like an egg and was called ”l’oeuf,” which is French for 'egg.' When tennis was introduced in the US, Americans (mis)pronounced it 'love.'

Q. Why do X's at the end of a letter signify kisses?

A: In the Middle Ages, when many people were unable to read or write, documents were often signed using an X. Kissing the X represented an oath to fulfill obligations specified in the document. The X and the kiss eventually became synonymous.

Q: Why is shifting responsibility to someone else called 'passing the buck'?

A: In card games, it was once customary to pass an item, called a buck, from player to player to indicate whose turn it was to deal. If a player did not wish to assume the responsibility of dealing, he would 'pass the buck' to the next player.

Q: Why do people clink their glasses before drinking a toast?

A: It used to be common for someone to try to kill an enemy by offering him a poisoned drink. To prove to a guest that a drink was safe, it became customary for a guest to pour a small amount of his drink into the glass of the host. Both men would drink it simultaneously.  When a guest trusted his host, he would only touch or clink the host's glass with his own.

Q: Why are people in the public eye said to be 'in the limelight'?

A: Invented in 1825, limelight was used in lighthouses and theatres by burning a cylinder of lime which produced a brilliant light. In the theatre,
a performer 'in the limelight' was the centre of attention.

Q: Why is someone who is feeling great 'on cloud nine'?

A: Types of clouds are numbered according to the altitudes they attain, with nine being the highest cloud If someone is said to be on cloud nine, that person is floating well above worldly cares.

Q: In golf, where did the term 'Caddie' come from?

A. When Mary Queen of Scots went to France as a young girl, Louis, King of France, learned that she loved the Scots game 'golf.' So he had the first course outside of Scotland built for her enjoyment. To make sure she was properly chaperoned  (and guarded) while she played, Louis hired cadets from a military school to accompany her. Mary liked this a lot and when returned to Scotland (not a very good idea in the long run), she took the practice with her. In French, the word cadet is pronounced  'ca-day' and the Scots changed it into 'caddie.

Q: Why are many coin banks shaped like pigs?

A: Long ago, dishes and cookware in Europe were made of a dense orange clay called 'pygg'. When people saved coins in jars made of this clay, the jars became known as 'pygg banks.' When an English potter misunderstood the word, he made a container that resembled a pig. And it caught on.

Q: Did you ever wonder why dimes, quarters and half dollars have notches (milling), while pennies and nickels do not?

A: The US Mint began putting notches on the edges of coins containing gold and silver to discourage holders from shaving off small quantities of the precious metals. Dimes, quarters and half dollars are notched because they used to contain silver. Pennies and nickels aren't notched because the metals they contain are not valuable enough to shave.

Membership Information

Don’t Forget the Next SPARTA Meeting

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

7 p.m.

LabCorp in the RTP

Free Food: Chicken, Drink, Dessert

Program:

z/OS 1.13

Speakers:

John Eells of IBM

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

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