SPARTA News November 2011
November 2011
SPARTA President’s Corner
by Brad Carson
Happy Thanksgiving to all of you. I hope everyone had a good holiday and enjoyed some good food and football. Now all we have to do is get ready for the Christmas holiday. Lots of cards to write and goodies to bake for the family and friends. I'm not even going anywhere near wrapping gifts.
Last month we had our first WebEx style meeting with our presenter John Eells from IBM giving his z/OS 1.13 presentation from Poughkeepsie, NY. For those of you who didn't or couldn't make it to SHARE, John does a very good job of telling us what's new in a release of z/OS. The link for his presentation from SHARE is http://proceedings.share.org/client_files/Share_in_Orlando_2/Session_9728_handout_1397_0.pdf for your reading pleasure.
Our DB2 V10 migration is at full steam now. We have completed the cutover to compatibility mode for all the subsystems on our QAAD LPAR (6) and only have the production billing subsystem left to do. In all our testing the z/OS side of it has not really had any major problems, but the web app side has had problems due to the fact that the DB2 Connect client software was not being kept up to date. We had to light a fire under their management to get the client software updated and the applications validated on working with DB2 V10. That is one group that seems very resistant to change here. Those were some interesting conference calls. Now that they have the DB2/Connect V9.7 client code installed, validation has gone much better for these web based applications.
We are beginning to look at the installation of z/VM 6.2 (due out soon) instead of z/VM 6.1. The new functions for single system mode has made that very attractive to us. Since we had just started the V6.1 installation, I was able to suspend to upgrade until V6.2 is available. I'll let you know how it goes in future newsletters.
This month our speaker will be Joe Hatcher from SAS Institute to talk to us about SAS's ITRM product. See you on the 29th at SAS!
Future Speakers
(subject to change)
Nov. 29 (at SAS) ITRM by Joe Hatcher of SAS
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 October 25, 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.
•Seventeen (17) people were present of which eleven (11) were members.
•Everyone in the room introduced themselves, told where they worked, and briefly described their job functions.
•The minutes of the September 2011 meeting were approved as published in the October 2011 newsletter.
•Tommy Thomas, the Chapter Treasurer, gave the Treasurer's Report. As of October 13, 2011, the balance is $921.53. 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):
- 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 November SPARTA meeting will be November 29 at SAS in Cary.
•Food for the November meeting will be subs.
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 was deferred until after the presentation.
•John Eells of IBM presented from Poughkeepsie, New York, via WebEx.
John’s presentation is available here at share.org - look for Orlando 2011 session 9728.
• Meeting ended at 8:40 PM.
Treasurer’s Report for November 2011
contributed by Tommy Thomas
The balance in the account is $893.16 as of November 9, 2011.
Financial Report
3/01/2011 through 11/9/2011
|
INCOME |
|
|
Opening Balance |
522.25 |
|
Dues |
650.00 |
|
Misc. |
0.00 |
|
TOTAL INCOME |
$1,172.25 |
|
EXPENSES |
|
|
Gift Given |
0.00 |
|
Food |
332.00 |
|
Petty Cash |
30.00 |
|
Bank Service Fees |
|
|
P.O. Box |
0.00 |
|
Hurricane Tickets |
|
|
Web Site |
0.00 |
|
TOTAL EXPENSE |
$362.00 |
|
BANK BALANCE |
810.25 |
|
PETTY CASH($175) |
82.91 |
|
TOTAL CASH |
$893.16 |
Items of Interest
SPARTA Schedule and Menu for 2011
contributed by Tommy Thomas and Chris Blackshire
Nov. 29 - Subs
Dec 27 - No Meeting, Happy Holidays!
The Future of Systems Programming
contributed by Ed Webb
Robert Crawford writes in his article in SearchDatacenter/TechTarget:
“The past three decades have brought a lot of changes to technology and mainframe jobs. In the ’80s, we brought down CICS at 10 p.m. so we could run batch jobs. Likewise, change management consisted of yelling, “New compiler coming!” over the cubicle wall before submitting the install job. In this tip, I’ll discuss the future of systems programming, which centers on several major themes:
• The growth of Unix on the mainframe
• More planning and outsourcing
• Busier programmers and the loss of systems programming skills”
He’s probably more right than we want to admit. Read the rest of his thoughts about the future of Systems Programming here:
http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/tip/The-future-of-systems-programming?asrc=EM_NLN_15465796&track=NL-576&ad=854440&
Mainframe Market Still Looking Good
contributed by Ed Webb
At least Mainframezone.com remains optimistic about our favorite computer platform:
http://www.mainframezone.com/it-management/z-vendor-watch-mainframe-market-still-looking-good
Examining the IBM z114 mainframe
contributed by Ed Webb
OK, another article from Robert Crawford at SearchDatacenter/TechTarget:
http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/tip/Examining-the-IBM-z114-mainframe?asrc=EM_NLN_15465786&track=NL-576&ad=854440&
Make Your Temporary Data Sets Really Unique
contributed by Ed Webb
For quite some time we have been depending on IBM’s temporary data set name algorithm to protect us from data set name conflicts. And it’s worked pretty well. But system performance and changing workloads threaten our comfortable use of temporary data set names.
Because our z machines are very fast, particularly a full speed z196, and many workloads use the same “jobname” (Unix or APPC to name a couple), your shop may run into temporary data set name conflicts; we have.
The good news is that IBM has a solution: TEMPDSFORMAT(UNIQUE) which changes the current dsname convention for &&datasets to be more unique. You can hard-code the new mechanism in ALLOCxx in PARMLIB or dynamically make the change via the SETALLOC command (the parameter and command are new in z/OS V1R12).
Unless you have processes or programs that are sensitive to the dsname of temporary data sets, there is no reason not to proceed now and avoid trouble whenever that new fast z arrives in your data center.
Humor
Adult Truths
contributed by Chris Blackshire
1. Sometimes I'll look down at my watch 3 consecutive times and still not know what time it is.
2. Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you're wrong.
3. I totally take back all those times I didn't want to nap when I was younger.
4. There is great need for a sarcasm font.
5. How the **** are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?
6. Was learning cursive really necessary?
7. Map Quest really needs to start their directions on # 5. I'm pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood.
8. Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died.
9. I can't remember the last time I wasn't at least kind of tired.
10. Bad decisions make good stories.
11. You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you know that you just aren't going to do anything productive for the rest of the day.
12. Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after Blue Ray? I don't want to have to restart my collection...again.
13. I'm always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten-page technical report that I swear I did not make any changes to.
14. I keep some people's phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.
15. I think the freezer deserves a light as well.
16. I disagree with Kay Jewelers. I would bet on any given Friday or Saturday night more kisses begin with Miller Lite than Kay.
17. I wish Google Maps had an "Avoid Ghetto" routing option.
18. I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger.
19. How many times is it appropriate to say "What?" before you just nod and smile because you still didn't hear or understand a word they said?
20. I love the sense of camaraderie when an entire line of cars team up to prevent a jerk from cutting in at the front. Stay strong, brothers and sisters!
21. Shirts get dirty. Underwear gets dirty. Pants? Pants never get dirty, and you can wear them forever.
22. Even under ideal conditions people have trouble locating their car keys in a pocket, finding their cell phone, and Pinning the Tail on the Donkey - but I'd bet everyone can find and push the snooze button from 3 feet away, in about 1.7 seconds, eyes closed, first time, every time.
23. The first testicular guard, the "Cup," was used in Hockey in 1874 and the first helmet was used in 1974. That means it only took 100 years for men to realize that their brain is also important.
Membership Information
Don’t Forget the Next SPARTA Meeting
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
7 p.m.
Special Location: SAS Building F in Cary
Take I-40 to Exit 287 Harrison Avenue Cary and go south (left over I-40 from Raleigh or right off I-40 from Durham). Turn left onto SAS Campus Drive at the traffic light. Go about a quarter mile or so. At the gate, tell the guard you are attending the SPARTA meeting. Take the first left for the most parking opportunities and walk across SAS Campus Drive to Building F. Go in the rightmost entrance to see Ed Webb. Here’s a map to SAS http://support.sas.com/training/fyi/ca_map.pdf and a map of the SAS campus http://support.sas.com/training/fyi/ca1_map.pdf.
SAS is a tobacco-free company
Smoking or the use of smokeless tobacco products is prohibited in SAS buildings, in company or personal vehicles, or anywhere on the SAS World Headquarters campus.
Free Food: Subs, Drink, Dessert
Program:
SAS ITRM
Speakers:
Joe Hatcher of SAS
SPARTA News
P.O. Box 13194
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-3194
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