SPARTA News

April 2014

SPARTA President’s Corner

contributed by Ron Pimblett

The highlight of the Year for the Mainframe was the IBM April 8th tribute to the mainframe called “Make the Extraordinary Possible“.

We saw IBM Senior Executives, Senior business and IT leaders from Citi, Visa, Business Connexion and Yale describe how the IBM mainframe remains a core foundation of today’s global business infrastructure.

Steve Mills, Senior VP and Group Executive kicked things off with a passion for the mainframe that he has had for years. He described the percentage of Fortune 500 companies depending on the Mainframe. One example was 15 Million transactions per minute,  all on the mainframe.

Steve believes that the mainframe has led the way to where we are today. It’s a journey for the last 50 years to transformations in the IT world. Steve took us through the history of the Mainframe and the fact that the Mainframe “name” came from the Frame that it was welded into.

The 1401’s notoriety in the 60s and then the evolution to the IBM 360 which was a vision of Tom Watson Jr. In 1973, Steve joined IBM and saw the advent of MVS. Because the mainframe was so expensive, you had to be disciplined and be very efficient in writing code. Today’s system is a “State of the Art” I/O Supercomputer with hundreds of Microprocessors that MVS manages for maximum reliability.

He described IBM’s new venture into Linux on the mainframe and recognized that you can’t stand still and need to move on. This is not your Father’s Mainframe with the fastest processors available today.

Visa discussed the impact of IBM mainframes to its business. VisaNet, Visa's authorization platform, core processing runs on IBM mainframes using the z/TPF operating system.

Jim McCarthy, Sr Vice President and Head of Innovation and Strategic Partnerships, took the stage and told a story how, in 1973, Visa and IBM partnered to implement a world premier credit card authorization system. The initial design accompanied with re- engineering and innovation is still in use today. VisaNet currently authorizes 90 billion transactions a year and has 20 years of no downtime in the peak holiday shopping season.

Visa, for example, uses the mainframe to secure billions of credit and debit card payments every year. In fact, mainframes process about $7 trillion in Visa payments annually, roughly equal to the annual GDP of Japan, the world’s third largest economy. When taking into account that more than 20 percent of global consumer spend is still in cash and check, it becomes even more important to build on a foundation that will enable the continued migration to electronic forms of payment.

Colleen Arnold, VP Sales & Distribution, talked about the Mainframe as the engine of progress. The Mainframe is absolutely necessary, because of the explosion of Data that has occurred in the last 10 years.

She spoke about IBM’s push into Health Care, Finance and the Cloud by using a reference at a South American Bank saying they had a growth of 97 % in traffic which means the Mainframe was the only solution that could keep up.

Citi's Managing Director of Core Infrastructure Services, Anthony DiSanto shared his insight into the partnership with IBM that has sustained their Enterprise Computing Center for the past 50 years. Mr. DiSanto's perspective on how listening is critical to any relationship and how that translates into the daily operations at Citi, one of the world's largest Financial Institutions. Citi supports 200 million customers in 160 countries.

WalMart was highlighted with a video covering their Enterprise Support and the Mainframe. The CIO is claiming 250 Million transactions a day.

At the end of the day the event really highlighted why the Mainframe is still “A force to be reckoned with Worldwide” and will be used by Fortune 500 companies on into the future. So SPARTA members who were able to hear the speakers must feel that their support for the Technology will help carry the mainframe legacy on for new Systems Programmers to learn and carry on despite other Enterprise Solutions that will constantly and always coexist in the Data Center.

Ron Pimblett Representing SPARTA

Looking forward to hear Mark Brooks of IBM talk about Parallel Sysplex on Tuesday, April 29^th at LabCorp in RTP. See you there.

Future Speakers

(subject to change)

Apr. 29 Parallel Sysplex by Mark Brooks of IBM

May 20 TBA

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.

2013-2014 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 1912 T.W. 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.

October 2013 “CBT Tape” Shareware Online

The directory and files from the latest CBT tape V487 (dated October 27, 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 March 25, 2014 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.

•Seventeen (17) people were present of which Sixteen (16) 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 February 2014 meeting were approved as published in the March 2014 newsletter.

•Tommy Thomas, the Chapter Treasurer, gave the Treasurer's Report. As of March 14, 2014, the balance is $870.01. Motion was made and approved to accept the Treasurer's Report as published in the March 2014 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 at 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 April 29 at LabCorp in RTP.

•Food for the April meeting will be Pizza.

•The 2014 dues are due ($30) starting in March 2014. Please see Tommy Thomas.

NEW BUSINESS

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

•There are currently 41 people on the SPARTA-RTP e-mailing list. There are no new additions since last month.

•Send any e-mail address changes to Chris Blackshire so he can update the SPARTA-RTP Listserv. You will be added by the moderator (Chris) sending you an invitation to Join the list. (ChrisBl@nc.rr.com)

•President’s Corner submissions are wanted. Please assist Ron Pimblett and Ed Webb with ideas or try actually writing a President’s Corner article. If your shop is installing software or an OS process like Brad wrote about, please write about it.

•The new officers will be elected next month. Please see Ron Pimblett about running for office especially for the President’s office when elections come due in April. We would like a strong z/OS person as typified by Brad Carson to lead the SPARTA group.

•The bank (PNC) sent a notice to Tommy that they are going to start charging SPARTA $17.00 per month for the checking account usage because of the low balance. Tommy has started moving the balance to Fidelity for their free checking for non-profit organizations.

•The IBM mainframe 360 turns 50 years old on April 7, 2014. Look for information from IBM and SPARTA as the date gets closer.

•The business portion of the meeting ended at 8:25 p.m.

PRESENTATION

• Presentation was given by Ed Webb of SAS Institute Inc. 

Topic: SHARE (122), March 9-14, 2014, in Anaheim, CA

AGENDA

• Highlights

• Why Go to SHARE?

• Quotes of Interest and Odds and Ends

• Best Sessions

• Disruptive Technology

• z/OS 2-Year Release Cycle

• z/OSMF 2.1 and z/OS 2.1 Summary

• Migrating to z/OS 2.1

• From the Bit Bucket

HIGHLIGHTS

• SHARE Attendance Trending Steady

• 524 Full Week Paid Attendees (1,049 Total Onsite)

• 638 in Boston, 579? In San Francisco, 527 in Anaheim, 612 in Atlanta, 600+ in Orlando, 673 in Anaheim

• 286 Member Companies

• SHARE Live! recorded several sessions in Anaheim

• Upcoming Conferences

 - SHARE 123 is August 3-8, 2014 at Pittsburgh Convention Center

 - SHARE 124 is March 1-6, 2015 at Seattle Sheraton

 - SHARE 125 is August 9-14, 2015 at WDW Orlando, FL

HIGHLIGHTS

• SHARE Conference Mobile App for iOS and Android

• Submit Your Proposal to Speak at SHARE in Pittsburgh by April 18, 2014

• Access to SHARE Proceedings Needs a SHARE Userid (free) at http://www.share.org

• SHARE New Affiliate Rate is $99 Per Year (no voting)

WHY GO TO SHARE?

• z/OS V2R1 Implements more than one-third of the MVS Program’s Top 39 Requirements

• At IBM’s request, MVS Core Technologies Project is Creating a new Top Requirements List

• REXX Support in BCPii was an Accepted SHARE Requirement in Jan. 2011

• BCPii REXX Support became available in z/OS V2R1 in Sept. 2013

• 2014 is the 50th Anniversary of System 360 and OS/360 –the Party Continues in Pittsburgh

QUOTES OF INTEREST

• “Systems of Engagement and Systems of Record” - Pat Toole, IBM, General Manager, System z, noting that System z is the System of Record

• “Health Check infrastructure is "the hub", products provide checks” - Marna Walle, IBM

• “Ginny R. (IBM CEO) is aware when a System z customer is down” - IBM Executive Panel

ODDS AND ENDS

• Oct. 2013, IBM postponed requiring Secured FTP connections for z/OS software and service delivery

 - See February 2013 SPARTA Newsletter for SFTP setup

 - Expect IBM to have more info in 2015

• August 2013 Hot Topics magazine is a Great Reference for z/OS V2R1 Topics

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/os/zos/library/hot-topics/hot-topics.html

• 4 TB per LPAR running z/OS in zNext machine

• z/OS LPAR limited by old I/O cards to 1 TB in current zEC12/zBC12

• Rollout plans (see 15142 z/OS Large Memory: Size Does Matter session at this SHARE)

• Cloud on System z

 - PaaS–EDS 1965 (Platform as a Service)

 - SaaS–SABRE Reservation System 1990s (Software as a Service)

 - IBM SmartCloud for System z –z/OS for Production Work

z/OS INFORMATION CHANGING

• z/OS Information Changes Coming

 - No BOOKs (in Bookmanager-format) in z/OS V2R1

 - PDFs and InfoCenter Only in z/OS V2R1

 - No Physical Media (DVD or Download DVD images)

• z/OS Data Area Books Are Only Available Online

• IBM Advanced Linguistic Search for PDFs

 - BookManagerSearch for PDFs

 - Plugin downloadable from IBM

BEST SESSIONS ATTENDED

• 15155 Tuesday Keynote: Spies, Hackers and Online Attackers …

 - John Sileo of The Sileo Group

 - Hogwash! to deter Social Engineering

• 14649/50 ISPF Hidden Treasures: Parts 1 and 2

 - Peter Van Dyck of IBM

 - vu and eu directory list commands for UTF-8 data

 - Filtering of path names, such as /usr/l*/[cs]*

 - Option 7.3 to set MYSTART or ZSTART to set up initial screens

 - ISPF MYSTART

- ISPF (if ZSTART) and ISPF BASIC to negate

• 14376 ISPF Experienced User Shares Secrets

 - Bruce Koss (Wells Fargo)

 - ISPF files are imbedded in his SHARE PDF (needs Adobe Reader to access)

 - EDIT MODEL command is powerful and popular in his shop

 - About 6000 ISPF users

• 15119 z/OS USS Security Best Practices

 - Vivian Morabito of IBM

 - z/OS Unix adds Extra Controls to restrict, limit and divide authorities

 - See z/OS Unix Security Fundamentals Redpaper REDP-4193

 - BPX.SERVER and BPX.DAEMON access list should not include "humans"

DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGY

• 15132 MVS Program Opening

 - Jose Castano of IBM

 - Analytics, Cloud, Mobile, Trusted

 - Strategic Priorities for System z

 - Data Server of Choice

 - zEnterprise compilers to create optimized infrastructure (COBOL, PL/I, C/C++)

 - Veristorm’s Hadoop on z is zLinux-based

 - 1-10 TB data on z from DB2 and CICS

 - >20 TB data use off of z

 - zBX may be too slow for very large data

z/OS 2-YEAR RELEASE CYCLE

• 2-Year Cycle Became Effective in March 2012

• Official Announcement in April 2012

 - Support Extensions for R12 and R13

 - No Change for R11 (free support ended Sept. 2012)

• Justifications

 - 5% of shops migrating to every annual release

 - 60% migrate every other release

 - Not enough time for exploitation of new function

• Other Reasons

 - Strain on testing resources

 - Reduce incremental delivery of function (EAV took 4 releases)

 - Do Not Expect Twice as Much Change

 - New Function APARs (Can You Say SPE?)

• Issues

 - APARs

 - Don’t FIN if you need a fix before 2H2015

z/OSMF V2R1

• WebSphereV8.5 Liberty profile

 - Significant Reductions in Resource Requirements

 - No Post-Processing Script to Implement PTFs

• New Workflow Application

 - See March 2014 SPARTA News for z/OS Migration Workflow

 - See Anuja D.’s The New and Improved z/OSMF 2.1 SHARE Session 15115

 - See John Eells’ What’s New in z/OS 2.1 SHARE Session 14660

• Software Management

 - Added by APAR PM74502 and others in 4Q2012

 - See January 2013 SPARTA Newsletter

• Software Deployment Manager

 - ServerPac-like

 - Manual JOB submission and tracking (for this release)

 - SMP/E Impact (V3.6 Required)

• Classic Interface (up to 4 TSO-lite Windows)

• Enhancements 1Q2014

 - See 114-009 dated 24Feb2014 for z/OS 2.1 and z/OSMF 2.1 enhancements

 - PM99518 allows Mass Add of non-SMP/E managed data sets and Mass Change of UNIX Paths

z/OS V2R1

• zAAP workloads can run on a zIIP even if a zAAP is present – now 2 zIIPs for every CP allowed

• Update the values of system symbols dynamically using SETLOAD command

• Two new FTP subcommands

 - MVSPut and MVSGet, to simplify transfer of sequential, PDS and PDSE data sets between z/OS systems

• New zFS file system version to significantly improve performance with large directories

• GRS allows programs to synchronously change an exclusive enqueue to a shared enqueue

• Comments now allowed in many PARMLIB members (thanks to Peter Relson of IBM) in response to SHARE Top 39 Requirements

• New BPXPRMxx parameter that allows a user to be logged off the system after a period of inactivity at the user's terminal

• HMC Integrated 3270 Console on zEnterprise servers can be a z/OS console including IPL

• New PARMDD DD statement passes parameter lists up to 32,760 bytes to a program from JCL

 - Not Available for TSO CALL

• SYSREXX, using REXX under TSO/E, supports the CONSOLE host command environment

 - Issue system and subsystem commands and monitor message traffic with an extended MCS console session in a SYSREXX exec

 - Can use to provide system automation functions

• REXX enhancements to EXECIO, LISTDSI, and STORAGE, and to provide a new variable to indicate the level of the operating system

• SMP/E V3R6 dialog SPE PTFs add support for multiple ISPF logical screens when different SMP/E zones are in use

• ISPF editor HILITE command flags the invalid use of lowercase characters in JCL

• ISPF editor allows regular expressions to be specified as arguments to FIND and CHANGE

• ISPF directory list display for z/OS UNIX supports SRCHFOR and FILTER commands

• UNIX Directory List Utility allows entry of line commands in blocks (//cmd and //)

• New Generic Tracking Facility (GTZ) replaces the Tracking Facility (Console ID Tracker and the EAV migration assistance tracker)

• z/OS V2.1 is last release to include the IBM HTTP Server Powered by Domino®

 - IBM recommends the IBM HTTP Server Powered by Apache, a z/OS Ported Tools Feature

• New z/OS Font Collection base element includes fonts from:

 - AFP Font Collection for S/390™ (5648-B33)

 - IBM Infoprint Fonts for z/OS V1.1 (5648-E76), and

 - World Type fonts from other IBM OS platforms, and

 - Double-byte Asian fonts

 - New large file system required

 - Java support this year (2014)

• RRSF connections over TCP/IP using IPv6

• RMF now offloads some processing to zips

z/OS V2R1 JES2

• JES2 Must Migrate with z/OS in V2R1

• 8 Character JOBCLASS

• Enhanced symbol processing in JCL in JES2

• JCL and System Symbols Available to JOBs

 - Symbols can be used in In-Stream Data

 - For Started Tasks, see Bit Bucket x’2E’ this SHARE

• JES2 Extended Status SSI allows programs without APF authorization to cancel, hold, purge, and release jobs, and to change their job classes

 - controlled by new profiles in RACF JESJOBS class

MIGRATING TO z/OS 2.1

• >http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/os/zos/bkserv/v2r1pdf/

• z/OS 2.1 Migration book GA32-0889-00 (one book, multiple migration paths, such as 1.12 to 2.1)

 - Updated for September 2013

• See “Migrating to z/OS 2.1” presentations from SHARE Anaheim

MIGRATING TO z/OS 2.1 

End Of Service Dates

• z/OS 1.9 End of Service was Sept. 30, 2010

• z/OS 1.10 End of Service is Sept. 30, 2011

 - Two more years (until Sept. 2013) for a fee

• z/OS 1.11 End of Service is Sept. 30, 2012

 - Two more years (until Sept. 2014) for a fee

• z/OS 1.12 End of Service is Sept. 30, 2014

• z/OS 1.13 End of Service is Sept. 30, 2016

• z/OS 2.1 End of Service is Sept. 30, 2018

• z/OS 2.2 End of Service is Sept. 30, 2020

FROM THE BIT BUCKET X’2E’ (SESSION 14648)

• AUTOIPL

• Two Health Checks

 - SVA_AUTOIPL_DEFINED

 - SVA_AUTOIPL_DEV_VALIDATION

• LONG PARM in Started Tasks

• OA43805 and P54.7859 are IBM and FDR fixes for an IOS Recovery problem

• zFS Reorg Tool

 -  See IBM Redpaper REDP-4769 for tool

• The presentation and discussions ended about 9:10 PM.

Treasurer’s Report for April 2014

contributed by Tommy Thomas

The balance in the account is $1020.95 as of April 15, 2014.

Financial Report

3/01/2013 through 04/15/2014

Items of Interest

SPARTA Schedule and Menu for 2014

contributed by Tommy Thomas and Chris Blackshire

Apr 29 - Pizza

May 20 - Chicken

June 24 - Subs

July 29 - BarBQ

Aug 25 - DBAP Buy Your Own (Monday night)

Sept 30 - Pizza

Oct 28 - Chicken

Dec 2 - Subs

Dec. 31 - No Meeting, Happy Holidays

Shifting the Brain Chemistry of Data Protection

contributed by Ed Webb

One of the Best Sessions that I saw at SHARE in Anaheim in March 2014 was John Sileo’s Keynote. Here’s a brief summary:

http://www.share.org/p/bl/et/blogid=2&blogaid=278

SHARE Housing and Registration Now Open for August 2014

contributed by Ed Webb

The city of Pittsburgh is prepared to welcome SHARE attendees and has provided multiple housing opportunities. Choose from the below options then head to our site to reserve your room.

Courtyard by Marriott Pittsburgh Downtown

945 Penn Avenue

Pittsburgh, PA 15222

800.321.2211

$179 per night for a single/double

Westin Convention Center Pittsburgh

1000 Penn Avenue

Pittsburgh, PA 15222

412.281.3700

$169 per night for a single/double

Registration is now open for SHARE in Pittsburgh, August 3-8, 2014. With over 500 user-focused sessions, unmatched networking opportunities, and hardware and software product highlights that will help you stay at the forefront of the industry, you won't want to miss this event. Register by June 20, 2014 to secure early savings.

The Mainframe is 50

Fifty Shades of Mainframe

contributed by Ed Webb

Mary Anne Matyaz, Core Technology Project Manager, posted this entry in the MVS Program blog in honor of the Mainframe’s 50th anniversary.

http://www.share.org/p/bl/et/blogid=0&blogaid=283&source=6

The ‘Engine of Progress’ Drives On

contributed by Ed Webb

Did you know that SHARE pre-dates the IBM Mainframe?

From the SHARE President’s Corner:

http://www.share.org/p/bl/et/blogid=0&blogaid=285&source=6

Membership Information

Don’t Forget the Next SPARTA Meeting

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

7 p.m.

LabCorp in the RTP

Take I-40 to Miami Boulevard and go north. Turn right onto 1912 T.W. 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: Pizza, Drink, Dessert

Program:

Parallel Sysplex

Speaker:

Mark Brooks of IBM

SPARTA News

P.O. Box 13194

Research Triangle Park, NC  27709-3194

First Class Postage

SPARTA Corporate Sponsors: