SPARTA News May 2012

May 2012

SPARTA President’s Corner

by Brad Carson

May is here and our community pool has opened at home. With the little heat wave we had earlier this month, I was quite happy to see this happen. At least this week we’ve had a return to some spring-like weather. We’ve also been having some fun with the geese around the CMBP building (where we meet) in RTP. The company has brought in some fake coyotes to try and spook them, but I don’t see that working so well. Soon enough they will be moving on.

Last month Mike Puiu from MVS Solutions came to speak to us about ThruPut Manager Automation Edition and the newer features being added to that product. We were a beta site for the initial version of this product and we are running it everywhere but our production LPAR (yet). The product works with WLM and JES2 to make sure your critical batch workload gets in and done. The big part of this product is to setup your policy correctly so that it will reorder the JES2 input queue and make the critical job(s) the next ones selected by JES2 to start.

By the time we meet on the 22nd, I hope we will have completed the migration of our largest DB2 subsystem to V10. Our target date is the evening of the 20th during our monthly maintenance window. So far on our QA environment everything has tested out with no issues, which is looking good. We will have a large audience doing production acceptance testing during the maintenance window on production. I’ll update everyone when we meet and in next month’s newsletter.

Our z/VM 6.2 installation has taken a back seat (for now) to the start of our z/OS 1.13 install. We will be picking this back up next month when I have some available staff to continue with it. We will also be upgrading our current RHEL guests to release 6 of Red Hat Linux. If I had the time, I’d like to do some of this myself. Oh well, the joys of management.

This month our speaker will be Zamir Gonzalez from IBM to talk to us about the new z/BX and related software enhancements. See you a week early on the 22nd at LabCorp.


Future Speakers
(subject to change)


May 22 (Special Date) zBX Overview and Update by Zamir Gonzalez of IBM
June 26 To MIPS or Not to MIPS by Gary King of IBM

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
DTS Software 919-nnn-mmmm

Raleigh, NC 276zz

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.

December 2011 “CBT Tape” Shareware Online

The directory and files from the latest CBT tape V483 (dated December 25, 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 April 24, 2012 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 ten (10) were members.
•Everyone in the room introduced themselves, told where they worked, and briefly described their job functions.
•The minutes of the March 2012 meeting were approved as published in the April 2012 newsletter.
•Tommy Thomas, the Chapter Treasurer, gave the Treasurer's Report. As of April 13, 2012, the balance is $1211.05. 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.

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

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

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

•The May SPARTA meeting will be May 22 at LabCorp in RTP.

•Food for the May 2012 meeting will be Chicken.

NEW BUSINESS

•SPARTA Annual elections: The current Board of Directors was “re-elected”.

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

•Send any e-mail address changes to Brad Carson so he can update the SPARTA Listserv.

•General roundtable discussion on IBM’s bad decision to stop shipping BookManager format books.

•The business portion of the meeting ended at 7:55 p.m.

•Mike Puiu of MVS Solutions, Inc. gave a presentation about How To Reduce Your 4-Hour Rolling Average.

Many thanks to Chris Canham, MVS solutions Regional Manager, for providing the food for the meeting.

•Best Sessions:

• ThruPut Manager AE (Automation Edition):
- Reducing your 4-hour rolling average safely and legitimately
- Your 4HRA can cost as much as $200 per MSU
- If you save 25%, it could mean $400K per year
- JAL - Job Action Language is used

• How to Reduce Your Software Costs:
- The 4HRA is based on the peak for the month (even if only hit once)
- Less important work is run in a reduced environment
- Usually can’t control your online environment, but
- Batch is a major component of usage - defer less important jobs
- LPAR Group Limit is generally the most effective
- Balancing Effect - Proposing (smoothing the ups and downs)
- Usually after a peak, there is a valley - run more in the valleys
- All production is not equal - control the non-critical batch

• ThruPut Manager AE
- Specify 5 levels of capacity
- Pick a target (example 800 MSU reduced to 750 MSU)
- Assign BI = Batch importance
- Through the JAL, each job is assigned a service group, a deferred target, and batch importance.
Service Group = Fast Path, 1 = Most important, 5 = Least important
Target = Acceptable, Critical
Batch Importance = Used to manage capacity
- AE uses a single JES queue (tries to manage to 85% utilization with fewer initiators)
- When systems are constrained, more important work is given preference
- Shorten Time in execution - AE ensures job is able to run when the job is selected

ThruPut Manager AE automatically monitors the 4-hour Rolling Average and as the utilization approaches a peak (the threshold that you set), it defers the batch workload, lowest priority first. When the peak passes, it resumes selecting the deferred workload. If your peaks occur at month end, the automated deferral of low importance work only takes place during that time

With ThruPut Manager AE, your highest peak for the month is lowered resulting in lower monthly charges, all without affecting your online workload or higher priority batch.

•Meeting ended at 8:50 PM.

Treasurer’s Report for May 2012

contributed by Tommy Thomas

The balance in the account is $1208.81 as of May 8, 2012.

Financial Report
3/01/2012 through 05/08/2012

Items of Interest


SPARTA Schedule and Menu for 2012

contributed by Tommy Thomas and Chris Blackshire

May 22 - Chicken
June 26 - Subs
July 31 - BarBQ
Aug. 21 - DBAP Buy Your Own
Sep. 25 - Pizza
Oct. 30 - Chicken
Nov. 27 - Subs
Dec. 25 - No Meeting, Happy Holidays


Announcing IOF 8E for 2Q2012

contributed by Ed Webb

Overview
IOF Release 8E now includes a completely supported e-mail interface for z/OS along with significant enhancements to the IOF SEND commands. You can easily scan the OPERLOG even if you normally access log data through SYSLOG. Every IOF screen display can now be captured and optionally converted to html format. Significant new SNAP and Rexx interface features were developed in support of the e-mail and send enhancements.

Release 8E supports all versions of z/OS through z/OS V1R13.  It may run but has not been tested with OS/390.

For more details, check out the IOF 8E info at http://www.triangle-systems.com/nl1203.shtml


SHARE Website Makeover

contributed by Ed Webb

“As an organization dedicated to providing year-round value to our members, SHARE is pleased to announce major updates made to the SHARE Web site! The updated SHARE.org, now available, is designed to make it easier for you to find relevant content and to connect with your peers. Every aspect of the new Web site works together and allows you to choose how you'd like to interact with SHARE.org - providing self-service and an intuitive experience. Visitors to SHARE.org can now expect to:

•Find content quickly with improved search capabilities, including full text searches, time frame limitations and file tagging. SHARE.org's improved search engine will sort through documents within the Web site to bring up the most accurate search results.

•Access past proceedings and technical content easily-organized clearly by topic, conference date, communities and more in the new easy-to-navigate SHARE Content Center.”

See more of the new website at SHARE.org.


New RACF Health Checks for z/OS R12 and R13

contributed by Ed Webb

Preface
This information applies to APAR OA37164 which provides two new RACF health checks and a new RACF V2R1 migration check.

Software requirements
Support for APAR OA37164 requires one of the following software releases:

z/OS Security Server RACF Version 1 Release 12 (FMID HRF7770)
z/OS Security Server RACF Version 1 Release 13 (FMID HRF7780)

Download the PDF documenting these checks is available at ftp://public.dhe.ibm.com/eserver/zseries/zos/racf/pdf/oa37164.pdf


REXX Proves Multilingual in Communicating with Environments

contributed by Ed Webb

“Programs written in the REXX language can communicate with a variety of “environments.” In REXX, the classic environment refers to the address space or sub-system from which the REXX program was invoked, or called. REXX programs can use the ADDRESS function to return a string describing the current executing environment. You can test this with a simple REXX program called from within the time-sharing option (TSO):

/* REXX */
ADDR = ADDRESS()
SAY 'The environment from which I was called is: 'ADDR
EXIT

Take the three lines of code, place it within a REXX library accessible to your Userid and give it the member name ADDR, then execute it as follows, with the output result as shown here:

EXEC 'yourUserid.REXX(ADDR)'

The environment from which I was called is: TSO”

For more about REXX in different environments, see the rest of the article at http://www.ibmsystemsmag.com/mainframe/tipstechniques/applicationdevelopment/rexx_talks/


Humor


Punography

contributed by Chris Blackshire

I changed my iPod name to Titanic. It's syncing now.

When chemists die, they barium.

Jokes about German sausage are the wurst .

A soldier who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran.

I know a guy who's addicted to brake fluid. But he says he can stop any time.

How does Moses make his tea? Hebrews it.

I stayed up all night to see where the sun went. Then it dawned on me.

This girl said she recognized me from the vegetarian club, but I'd never met herbivore.

A guy got arrested for playing the guitar. He was picking A Minor with his finger.

I'm reading a book about anti-gravity and I can't put it down.

I did a theatrical performance about puns. It was a play on words.

The doctor report said I had type A blood, but it was a Type-O.

A dyslexic man walks into a bra.

PMS jokes aren't funny, period.

Why were the Indians here first? They had reservations.

Class trip to the Coca-Cola factory; I hope there's no pop quiz .

Energizer bunny arrested; charged with battery.

I didn't like my beard at first. Then it grew on me.

How do you make holy water? Boil the hell out of it.

Did you hear about the cross-eyed teacher who lost her job because she couldn't control her pupils?

When you get a bladder infection, urine trouble.

What does a clock do when it's hungry? It goes back four seconds.

I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger. Then it hit me.

Broken pencils are pointless.

I tried to catch some fog. I mist.

What do you call a dinosaur with a extensive vocabulary? A thesaurus.

England has no kidney bank, but it does have a Liverpool.

I used to be a banker, but then I lost interest.

I dropped out of communism class because of lousy Marx.

All the toilets in New York's police stations have been stolen. Police have nothing to go on.

I got a job at a bakery because I kneaded dough.

Haunted French pancakes give me the crepes.

Velcro - what a rip off.

Cartoonist found dead in home. Details are sketchy.

Venison for dinner ? Oh deer.

Earthquake in Washington obviously government's fault.

I used to think I was indecisive, but now I'm not so sure.

I do not enjoy computer jokes. Not one bit.

Be kind to your dentist. He has fillings too.


The Giraffe Test

contributed by Chris Blackshire

There are only 4 questions. Don’t miss one.
 
1. How do you put a giraffe into a refrigerator?
Stop and think about it and decide on your answer before continue.
 
Correct answer: Open the refrigerator, put in the giraffe, and close the door.

This question tests whether you tend to do simple things in an overly complicated way.
 
2. How do you put an elephant into a refrigerator?
 
Did you say, Open the refrigerator, put in the elephant, and close the refrigerator?
 
Wrong Answer.
 
Correct answer: Open the refrigerator, take out the giraffe, put in the elephant and close the door.

This tests your ability to think through the repercussions of your previous actions.
 
3. The Lion King is hosting an animal conference. All the animals attend except one.
Which animal does not attend?
 
Correct Answer: The Elephant. The elephant is in the refrigerator. You just put him in there.

This tests your memory.
 
Okay, even if you did not answer the first three questions correctly, you still have one more chance to show your true abilities.
 
4. There is a river you must cross, but it is used by crocodiles, and you do not have a boat. How do you manage it?
 
Correct Answer: You jump into the river and swim across. Have you not been listening? All the crocodiles are attending the animal conference.

This tests whether you learn quickly from your mistakes.
 
According to Anderson Consulting Worldwide, around 90% of the professionals they tested got all the questions wrong, but many preschoolers got several correct answers. Anderson Consulting says this conclusively proves the theory that most professionals do not have the brains of a four-year-old.
 
Try this quiz on all of your smart friends.

Membership Information

Don’t Forget the Next SPARTA Meeting

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

7 p.m.

LabCorp in the RTP

Free Food: Chicken, Drink, Dessert

Program:

zBX Today: Overview and Updates

Speaker:

Zamir Gonzalez, zITA IBM

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

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