SPARTA News November 2013

November 2013

SPARTA President’s Corner

contributed by Ed Webb

IBM’s Andre Clark and Edward Addison talked with us this month about CICS Transaction Server for z/OS. They focused on the new 5.1 release but assured us that older releases will be supported for a while. Check out the presentation notes later in this newsletter.

z/OS 2.1 has dominated our recent efforts at SAS. Getting systems setup for product testing has consumed my time since late June. And now that 2.1 is Generally Available (G.A.), our customers are beginning to weigh in, slowly. Our experience with 2.1 is mixed. We had some challenges with the removal of the default uid/gid option for z/OS Unix users; for us, a significant, and ongoing, migration, issue. We opened and have received fixes from IBM for at least a dozen problems; a couple remain outstanding, and we just ran across a new, open, one this past week. Because most shops are not as aggressive as we have to be in moving to a new z/OS, you should be fine if you order your ServerPac in late January 2014. In the meantime, work on the migration issues in your shop. There’s a lot to like in z/OS 2.1 so be ready to move next year.

Our SAS 9.4 release also recently became available. Because of late-breaking Java 6 and 7 changes for Security and Integrity reasons, outside of our control, I suggest waiting for the first Modification Level of SAS 9.4 before implementing 9.4 in Production on z; early next year if all goes well.

This month we have a Surprise Speaker courtesy of our intrepid VP, Ron Pimblett. But don’t despair. We’ll make the final meeting of the year a good one, with good friends. And we’ll have some Subs as well at our meeting on November 19 at LabCorp in RTP. See you there.


Future Speakers
(subject to change)


Nov. 19 TBA
Dec. 31 No Meeting. Happy Holidays!
Jan. 28 TBD

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.

2012-2013 SPARTA
Board of Directors

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

Ron Pimblett - Vice President
MDI Data Systems 919-426-6518
866-634-3282
Raleigh, NC 27609

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.
Burlington, NC 27215

Ed Webb - Communications Director
SAS Institute Inc. 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-RTP Group. The newsletter is posted to the website about five (5) days before each meeting so you can prepare. The SPARTA-RTP Group is maintained by Chris Blackshire; if you have corrections or problems receiving your meeting notice, contact Chris at chrisbl@nc.rr.com.

April 2013 “CBT Tape” Shareware Online

The directory and files from the latest CBT tape V486 (dated April 2, 2013) are available from www.cbttape.org.

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

Minutes of the October 29, 2013 Meeting

•Meeting was called to order at 7:00 PM by Ron Pimblett, the Chapter Vice President.
•The meeting was held at LabCorp in RTP, N.C.
•Sixteen (16) people were present of which twelve (12) were members.
•Everyone in the room introduced themselves, told where they worked, and briefly described their job functions or their job hunting challenges.
•The minutes of the September 24, 2013 meeting were approved as published in the October 2013 newsletter.
•Tommy Thomas, the Chapter Treasurer, gave the Treasurer's Report. As of October 16, 2013, the balance is $790.32. Motion was made and approved to accept the Treasurer's Report as published in the October 2013 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.

•Ron Pimblett 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 (919-833-8426).

•The next SPARTA monthly meeting will be November 19 at LabCorp in RTP.

•Food for the November 19 meeting will be sub sandwiches.


NEW BUSINESS

•Thanks to LabCorp (Tommy Thomas) for hosting the October meeting.

•There are currently 36 people on the SPARTA-RTP emailing list. There are currently 5 outstanding join invitations.

•Send any e-mail address changes to Chris Blackshire so he can update the SPARTA-RTP Listserv (or send you an invitation to Join).

•The Presidents corner was an abbreviated version this month. Please assist Ron Pimblett with ideas or actually writing a corner article. If your shop is installing software or an OS processes like Brad used to write about, please write about it.

•The business portion of the meeting ended at 8:00 p.m.

PRESENTATION

•Presentation was given by Andre Clark and Ed Addison of IBM for a CICS TS V5.1 Technical Overview.

• CICS Transaction Server – Statements of Directions

• Support
- IBM intends to continue to support both CICS TS V3.1 and CICS TS V3.2 until at least 3Q 2014, providing more than 9 years of support for the overall version since its initial introduction.
- Effective December 31, 2015, IBM will discontinue support for the following programs:
- 5655-M15 CICS Transaction Server for z/OS V3.1
- 5655-M15 CICS Transaction Server for z/OS V3.2
- IBM intends to continue to support both CICS TS V4.1 and CICS TS V4.2 until at least 3Q 2017, providing more than 8 years of support for the overall version since its initial introduction.

• Function
- IBM intends to deliver enhanced support for mobile applications interacting with IBM CICS Transaction Server for z/OS ( CICS TS) services, using the lightweight data-interchange format JavaScript Object Notation (JSON).
- CICS TS FEATURE PACK FOR MOBILE EXTENSIONS V1.0
- IBM intends to deliver a new version of the IBM CICS Transaction Server (CICS TS) Feature Pack for Dynamic Scripting. - Delivered August 13
- IBM intends to deliver a new CICS TS Feature Pack for Security Token Extensions.
Delivered October 8
- IBM intends that a future release of IBM WebSphere MQ Explorer will be delivered as a plug-in for IBM Explorer for z/OS and IBM CICS Explorer - Delivered April 23

• Stabilization of Support
- CICSPlex SM Web User Interface (WUI) is stabilized. The CICSPlex SM WUI will not be withdrawn during the lifetime of CICS TS V5.
- Extended Recovery Facility (XRF) is deprecated in CICS TS V5.1. Alternative technologies are available that provide more flexible high-availability solutions for modern workloads, including the z/OS Automatic Restart Manager (ARM), CICS data sharing and use of the cross-system coupling facility, and VTAM persistent sessions.

• Driving operational efficiencies - Greater capacity
- Greater capacity
- Maximum number of concurrent user tasks per region is now 2,000
- MXT minimum increased from 1 to 10
- Default changed from 5 to 500
- 24 bit VSCR in particular gives more capacity to a single region
- Allows consolidation of regions – after appropriate tuning of storage limits
- New instrumentation for current and max tasks values
- Additional CICS domains exploiting 64-bit storage
- Console Queue Domain
- Storage Manager Domain
- Loader Domain
- New function exploiting 64-bit storage
- CICS requires a MEMLIMIT setting of 6GB or higher Above the Bar storage
- 24-bit Virtual Storage Constraint Relief
- Control blocks, Modules, and stack storage moved above the line
- Syncpoint, Transient Data, Journal Control
- Transient Data buffers - Moved from 24-bit to 31-bit
- Removed 24 bit storage consumption by CICS supplied transactions
- IPCS VERBX DFHPD680 now runs RMODE(ANY)
- Language Environment APAR PM57053 (z/OS R13)
- Reduces LE’s use of 24-bit CICS storage in the SDSA
- Commands that access Transient Data (TD) are now threadsafe
- More SPI commands are now threadsafe
-EXEC CICS SET TASK
- INQUIRE and SET TRACEDEST / TRACEFLAG / TRACETYPE
- Removed TCB switch for Java applications accessing DB2
- Required PTFs for DB2 V9 (UK78500) and V10 (UK78499)
- Increase the potential CICS program LOAD capacity
- Reduced contention for the single CICS RO TCB
- Program Loads can now be executed on an OPEN TCB
- 64-bit CICS Assembler Application Support – AMODE(64)
- AMODE(64) Non-Language Environment Assembler Only!
- Provides application support to access large data objects
- Application can cache large amounts of data above the bar
- Application must copy data into 31 bit storage if used on CICS API
- Application can use containers to pass data

• Managed operations - Policies
- Policies are deployed to a specific scope
- an application scope, or
- an operation scope within the application, or
- a platform scope, or
- no scope - meaning it is scoped to the CICS region
- Policy rules for an application viewable via CICS Explorer

• Increased Availability Enhancements
- Dynamically install the CICS TYPE 3 supervisor call (SVC) using new utility DFHCSVCU
- No need to IPL z/OS therefore more flexible and faster to install CICS
- SSL certificates and environment can be refreshed online for improve 24x7 operation
- New PERFORM SSL REBUILD command
- After updating key ring with new certificate
- After LDAP server is restarted
- IPIC heartbeat messages to systems that can respond to them
- CICS TS 5.1 & CICS VR 5.1 support replication logging
- New VSAM cluster attribute results produce consolidated log records for software replication

* CICS TS V5.1 introduces a number of enhancements to make operations easier and more transparent
- The default values for several CICS SIT parameters are changed to adopt best practice
- or removed where CICS is now able to automatically make adjustments at run time.
- Such As: MAXOPENTCBS, MAXXPTCBS, MAXJVMTCBS

• Driving Operational Efficiencies - Deeper insight

• Deeper insight
- SPI commands (SET, PERFORM, ENABLE, DISABLE, and RESYNC) now audited to the CICS CADS TD destination
- DFHAP1900 date time applid netname userid transid command RESP(response) RESP2(n)
- Issued after command completes
- SSL CIPHER code
- SSL ciphers used are now recorded in SMF 110 CMF performance class records for better performance analysis
- zAAP/zIIP Specialty Processor Transaction CPU time
- New CMF Performance Class Fields
- Requires z/OS R13 APAR OA38409 and IBM System z9 or later
- New regular status messages are issued during startup if VSAM RLS data sets require lost locks recovery processing

• CICS Developer Trial
- Software prerequisites
- CICS TS V5.1 requires z/OS V1.13, or later
- IBM 64-bit SDK for z/OS, Java Technology Edition V7.0.0
- Required if using Java application programs, the CICS Web Services Assistant, the CICS XML Assistant or validation of web services/XML transforms
- The IBM XML Toolkit V1.10 for z/OS is not required for installation
- Required at runtime if WS-Security is used (Apply APAR OA14956)
- If not present at runtime DFHPI0119 will be issued
- IBM XML Toolkit and Java SDK NOT shipped with CICS
- Software prerequisites for CICS Tools
- CICS Performance Analyzer V5.1
- CICS Interdependency Analyzer V5.1
- CICS Configuration Manager V5.1
- CICS Deployment Assistant V5.1
- CICS VSAM Recovery V5.1
- CICS Transaction Gateway V7.1 or later
- IMS V11 or later
- 11 with PM31729
- 12 with PM31420, PM45414, PM47327, PM60830 and PM67188 for threadsafe support
- DB2 V9.1 or later
- WebSphere MQ V7.0.1 or later
- WebSphere Application Server for z/OS V7.0 or later

• External Changes
- MEMLIMIT
- CICS TS V5.1 requires a minimum of 6GB
- DFHSM0602 message is issued and CICS terminates
- if MEMLIMIT is less than 6GB
- Above bar storage usage
- Main Temporary storage
- Minimum 1 MB
- Limited to 25% of MEMLIMIT
- Channels and containers
- Limited to 5% of MEMLIMIT
- Internal Trace Table
- Minimum 16 KB
- Maximum 1 GB
- Transaction Dump Table (TRTRANSZ SIT parameter)
- Minimum 16 KB
- Maximum 1 GB
- Some LD domain control blocks
- Some SM domain control blocks
- Application data cached using Amode 64 GETMAIN
- JAVADIR parameter (Default value has changed in the installation procedures)
- JAVA/J7.0_64
- Release levels
- INQUIRE SYSTEM RELEASE returns 0680
- Utility programs suffixed with 680 (e.g. DFHPD680)
- STEPLIB concatenation
- SEYUAUTH must be in the concatenation even if CPSM is not used
(Used for CICS Explorer)
- Changed System Initialization parameters
- AKPFREQ={4000|number} (Minimum lowered from 200 to 50)
- AUTORESETTIME={IMMEDIATE|NO|YES}
- A new option, IMMEDIATE, now synchronizes the time at the next task attach. The IMMEDIATE option is the default
- EDSALIM={800M|number} Default changed from 48MB to 800MB
- ICVTSD={0|number} Terminal Scan Delay default changed to 0
- Changed System Initialization parameters
- MXT={500|number}
- Maximum tasks limit increased from 999 to 2000
- Default value changed from 5 to 500
- Minimum increased from 1 to 10
- PRTYAGE={1000|value} Default changed from 32768ms to 1000ms
- STATINT={010000|hhmmss } Statistic Interval
- Default changed from 030000 to 010000 (hhmmss)
- TRTRANSZ={1024|number-of-kilobytes}
- Default increased from 16K to 1024K (1 MB)
- Transaction Dump trace table is in 64-bit storage
- Giving much better chance of tracing the error before a dump

• Obsolete System Initialization parameters
- EJBROLEPRFX (EJB support has been removed)
- IIOPLISTENER (IIOP support has been removed)
- JVMCCSIZE
- JVMCCSTART
- JVMLEVEL0TRACE
- JVMLEVEL1TRACE
- JVMLEVEL2TRACE
- JVMUSERTRACE (Pooled JVM support has been removed)
- MAXOPENTCBS (Parameter obsolete) (Set to a value of ((MXT * 2) + 32) )
- MAXXPTCBS (Parameter obsolete) (Set to the value of MXT)
- MAXJVMTCBS (Parameter obsolete, support for pooled JVMs has been removed)
- TDSUBTASK
- If on QR TCB TD will switch to FO TCB, If on an open TCB it uses the open TCB
- Transient Data is now Threadsafe
- XEJB (EJB support has been removed)

• New SPI options
- ENABLE EXIT
- A new options GALOCATION and REQUIRED are added
- INQUIRE ASSOCIATION
- New options ACAPPLNAME, ACMAJORVER, ACMICROVER, ACMINORVER.ACOPERNAME, ACPLATNAME are added
- INQUIRE BUNDLE
- New options BUNDLEID, MGMTPART, MAJORVERSION, MICROVERSION, MINORVERSION are added
- INQUIRE BUNDLEPART
- The PARTCLASS option returns a new value ENTRYPOINTew value REQUIRED is added to the CONCURRENCY option
- INQUIRE CAPTURESPEC
- The PRIMPREDTYPE option returns a new value MESSAGEID
- INQUIRE DISPATCHER
- The MAXOPENTCBS and MAXXPTCBS options on the INQUIRE DISPATCHER command are still available, but the values that they return now represent limits set automatically by CICS based on the maximum number of tasks specified for the CICS region
- INQUIRE DSNAME
- New option LOGREPSTATUS to support replication logging.
- INQUIRE EVENTBINDING
- New options EPADAPTERRES and EPADAPTERSET are added
- INQUIRE EXITPROGRAM
- A new value REQUIRED can be returned for CONCURRENTST
- INQUIRE JVMSERVER
- A new option PROFILEDIR has been added
- INQUIRE PROGRAM
- New options APPLICATION, APPLMAJORVER, APPLMINORVER , APPLMICROVER, ENTRYPOINT and OPERATION are added.
- INQUIRE SYSTEM
- New options ETDSASIZE, GCDSASIZE, GSDSASIZE, and GUDSASIZE are added
- INQUIRE URIMAP
- The USAGE option has a new value JVMSERVER
- SET PROGRAM
- A new option OPERATION has been added
- SET STATISTICS
- The default value for interval has decreased form 3hrs to 1hr
- SET SYSTEM
- The max value for MAXTASKS has increased to 2000 and the minimum to 10
- PERFORM SSL REBUILD
- Refresh the SSL environment and the cache of certificates for the CICS region
- INQUIRE EPADAPTERSET
- Retrieve information about a specified event processing adapter set
- INQUIRE EPADAPTINSET
- Retrieve the names of all EP adapters that are specified in an EP adapter set
- SET EPADAPTERSET
- Set the status of a specified EP adapter set to enabled or disabled

• New CEMT Commands
- PERFORM SSL REBUILD
- Refresh the SSL environment and the cache of certificates for the CICS region
- INQUIRE EPADAPTERSET
- Retrieve information about an EP adapter set
- SET EPADAPTERSET
- Enable or disable an EP adapter set

• New CICS Supplied Category 2 Transactions
- CKBC
- Specify CKBC, or your own transaction based on WebSphere MQ DPL Bridge
- CKBC runs program DFHMQBP3.
- CJSA - the default transaction to start CICS tasks that run new threads in the JVM server for a Java application. You can override it using a URIMAP resource
- CJSD - handles general configuration errors in the Liberty profile server where the task could not be attached
- CJST - handles a specific configuration error in the Liberty profile server where the application is unavailable
- CJSU - handles authorization failures in the Liberty profile server.

• Global User Exits
- It is HIGHLY recommended that ALL global user exits be analyzed to ensure that they are THREADSAFE and that their PROGRAM definitions changed to specify CONCURRENCY(THREADSAFE)
- All exits that use XPI DFHKEDSX START_PURGE_PROTECTION & STOP_PURGE_PROTECTION calls MUST be reassembled
- In the DFHLDLDX loader functions of the XPI, the size of the tokens that are used for the PROGRAM_TOKEN and NEW_PROGRAM_TOKEN options has increased from 4 bytes to 8 bytes
- Programs need to be changed and re-assembled

• Monitoring
- Record size increases to 3260 bytes
- MCT default changed from RMI=NO to RMI=YES
- New monitoring data
- CEC Machine Type and Model ID
- Current active task count and maxtask setting
- Extensions to allow better WAIT analysis
- MRO/ISC Allocate Waits
- IPIC Allocate Waits
- RO TCB and SO TCB Mode Delays
- Intrapartition and Extrapartition TD Lock Waits
- File Control Exclusive Control Waits
- VSAM File String Waits
- Total CPU time on standard CP
- Total Offload CPU time on standard CP
- SSL Cipher code
- Application context
- Policy exceeded count

• Discontinued Functions
- CICS Message Editing Utility (DFHMEU)
- The CICS Message Editing Utility (DFHMEU) is removed from CICS TS V5.1 and later
- Enterprise Java Beans
- CICS TS V5.1 discontinues support for both session beans using Enterprise Java Beans (EJB), and the Java pool and its CORBA infrastructure
- CCI Connector for CICS TS
- The CCI Connector for CICS TS is a deprecated Java interface that is no longer available in CICS TS V5.1
- CICS TS Feature Pack for Dynamic Scripting
- CICS TS Feature Pack for Dynamic Scripting V1.0 runs on CICS TS V4.1 only
- CICS TS Feature Pack for Dynamic Scripting V1.1 runs on CICS TS V4.2 only
No other versions of CICS TS are supported by this Feature Pack

• Summary
- Installation
- Similar to previous releases
- Standard IBM procedure or DFHISTAR
- Upgrading
- Application Programmers
- Review Java programs and procedures
- Systems Programmers
- “Normal” release process
- Review all GLUES, TRUES, URMs and Resource definitions

• Contact Information
- Ed Addison - at IBM: 919-254-6515 - Email: eaddison@us.ibm.com
- Andre Clark - at IBM: 704-574-2473

• The presentation and discussions ended about 8:50 PM.

Treasurer’s Report for November 2013

contributed by Tommy Thomas

The balance in the account is $718.87 as of November 13, 2013.

Financial Report
3/01/2013 through 11/13/2013

Items of Interest


SPARTA Schedule and Menu for 2013

contributed by Tommy Thomas and Chris Blackshire

Nov. 19 - Subs
Dec. 31 - No Meeting, Happy Holidays


SHARE Registration and Hotel Reservation Can Be Made Now

contributed by Ed Webb

Registration is now open for SHARE in Anaheim, March 9-14, 2014. Join us for over 500 user-focused sessions, networking opportunities and hardware and software product highlights to stay at the forefront of the industry. Register before January 31, 2014 to secure early savings.

Host to all technical sessions, networking events and the SHARE Technology Exchange Expo, the Anaheim Marriott has everything SHARE attendees need under one roof. 

Anaheim Marriott
700 W. Convention Way
Anaheim, CA 92802
714.750.8000
$169/night [includes internet access]
$133/night for government employees (limited number available)


When Your PC Fails

contributed by Chris Blackshire

When, and not IF, your PC fails, you need the minimal following data backed up:

1) Email Contact Information
2) Email Messages
3) Favorites
4) My Documents

Most importantly, all of this data needs copied to an external drive (could be a cloud), because the high probably will be that your internal drive (your C: drive) will be what fails.


Humor


I’m Keeping My Mouth Shut

contributed by Chris Blackshire

Last night I was sitting in the living room, talking to my wife about  life...
In-between, we talked about the idea of living or dying.
 
I told her: Never let me live in a vegetative state, totally dependent on machines and liquids from a bottle. If you see me in that state I want you to disconnect all the contraptions that are keeping me alive, I'd much rather die'.
 
My wife got up from the sofa with this real look of admiration towards me.... and proceeded to disconnect the TV, the Cable, the Dish, the DVD, the Computer, the Cell Phone, the iPod, and the Xbox, and then went to the bar and threw away all my whiskey, rum, gin, vodka & the beer in the fridge...
 
I ALMOST DIED!!
 
Moral:
1. Think about what you wish for.....
2. The female brain works on a different wavelength from the male's.

Membership Information

Don’t Forget the Next SPARTA Meeting

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

7 p.m.

LabCorp in the RTP

Free Food: Subs, Drink, Dessert

Program:

Ron's Surprise

Speaker:

To Be Announced

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

First Class Postage

SPARTA Corporate Sponsors: