SPARTA News
October 2014
SPARTA President’s Corner
contributed by Chris Blackshire
What The Heck is... Big Data?
Big Data is one of the biggest buzzwords around at the moment.
Some say it will be even bigger than the Internet. Basically,
big data refers to the ability to collect and analyze the vast
amounts of data that is now being generated in the world. This
is some research on what the term 'Big Data' is and some
definitions.
Not only do we have a lot of data, we also have a lots of
different and new types of data: text, video, web search logs,
sensor data, financial transactions and credit card payments
etc.
In the world of ‘Big Data’ these are the 4 Vs that characterize
big data:
•Volume - the vast amounts of data generated every second
•Velocity - the speed at which new data is generated and moves
around (credit card fraud detection is a good example where
millions of transactions are checked for unusual patterns in
almost real time)
•Variety - the increasingly different types of data (from
financial data to social media feeds, from photos to sensor
data, from video capture to voice recordings)
•Veracity - the messiness of the data (just think of Twitter
posts with hash tags, abbreviations, typos and colloquial
speech)
In the past we had traditional database and analytics tools that
couldn’t deal with extremely large, messy, unstructured and fast
moving data. There is software like Hadoop and others which
enable us to analyze large volumes of data.
The 4 Layers of Big Data:
1) Data sources layer - This is where the data is arrives at
your organization. It includes everything from your sales
records, customer database, feedback, social media channels,
marketing list, email archives and any data gleaned from
monitoring or measuring aspects of your operations.
2) Data storage layer - This is where your Big Data lives, once
it is gathered from your sources. As the volume of data
generated and stored by companies has started to explode,
sophisticated but accessible systems and tools have been
developed – such as Apache Hadoop DFS (distributed file system)
or Google File System, to help with this task.
3) Data processing/ analysis layer - When you want to use the
data you have stored to find out something useful, you will need
to process and analyze it. A common method is by using a
MapReduce tool. Essentially, this is used to select the elements
of the data that you want to analyze, and putting it into a
format from which insights can be gleaned.
4) Data output layer - This is how the insights gleaned through
the analysis is passed on to the people who can take action to
benefit from them. Clear and concise communication is essential,
and this output can take the form of reports, charts, figures
and key recommendations to take action based on the analysis of
the data.
Lastly, no discussion about Big Data could be complete without
mentioning the increasing concerns about privacy. Many concerns
have been expressed about how retailers, credit card companies,
search engine providers and mail or social media companies use
our private information.
Many Big Data details can be found from these sessions from
Pittsburgh's SHARE 123:
1) 15404: Survival Tips for Big Data's Impact on Performance
2) 15496: z/OS Hybrid Batch Processing and Big Data
3) 15595: What's Happening to the Mainframe? Mobile? Social?
Cloud? Big Data?
4) 15667: Dealing with the Uncertainty of Big Data Security
5) 15757: Business Analytics The Key Element in Enterprise Big
Data Initiatives
6) 15961: Hadoop and Data Integration with System z
7) 16103: Big Data Strategies with IMS
8) 15798: Is Your Staff Big Data Ready?
9) 16256: Introducing CA Big Data Management: It’s here, but
what can it do for your business?
See you on our new night (the first Tuesday of the month)
on Tuesday, November 4, 2014, at LabCorp in RTP.
Chris Blackshire
Future Speakers
(subject to change)
Nov. 4 (Oct. meeting) - zSAT Systems Analysis Tool for z/OS by TPF Software
Dec. 2 (Nov. meeting) - TBD
Dec. 30 - 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.
2013-2014 SPARTA
Board of Directors
Brad Carson - President
(1959-2013)
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.
June 2014 “CBT Tape” Shareware Online
The directory and files from the latest CBT tape V488 (dated June 03, 2014) 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 September 30, 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.
•Fifteen (15) people were present of which Twelve (12) were 2014 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 July 2014 meeting were approved as
published in the September 2014 newsletter.
•Tommy Thomas, the Chapter Treasurer, gave the Treasurer's Report. As of Sept. 12, 2014, the balance is $737.88. Motion was made and approved to accept the Treasurer's Report as published in the September 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.
•Tommy reminded everyone to leave the LabCorp conference room clean.
•Future Speakers and Topics (subject to change based on internal politics, budget, the weather):
|
Date |
Company |
Speaker |
Topic |
|
Nov. 4, 2014 |
Innovation DP |
M Macisaac |
FDR PassVM |
|
Dec. 2, 2014 |
Watson Walker |
Cheryl Watson or Frank Kyne |
Series z Performance |
If you have suggestions about speakers and topics, contact Ron
Pimblett (919-833-8426).
•The next SPARTA monthly meeting will be November
4, 2014, at the DBAP.
•Food for the November 4 meeting will be Chicken.
NEW BUSINESS
•Thanks to LabCorp (Tommy Thomas) for hosting the meeting.
•There are currently 43 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.
•Chris Blackshire on behalf of the SPARTA membership presented
Ron Pimblett with a Roberts Rules of Order book. The book's
rules were immediately used for the subsequent motion regarding
meeting date change.
•Tommy is having a conflict with our next two
meeting dates. Motion was made to change the SPARTA meetings to
the Oct. 28 meeting to Nov. 4, and the Nov. 25 meeting to Dec.
2, 2014. Motion was seconded and approved to change the next
2 SPARTA meeting dates. The new meeting schedule is as
follows for 2014 and 2015:
Nov 4, 2014
Dec 2, 2014
Feb 3, 2015
March 3
April 7
May 5
June 2
July 7
Aug 4
Sept 1 (date subject to change for Durham Bulls Baseball
Schedule)
Oct 6
Nov 3
Dec 1
PRESENTATION
Treasurer’s Report for October 2014
contributed by Tommy Thomas
The balance in the account is $522.94 as of October 10, 2014.
SPARTA Financial Report
3/01/2014 through 10/10/2014
|
INCOME |
|
|
|
|
|
Opening Balance |
0.00 |
|
Total Deposits |
|
|
Dues |
680.00 |
|
Close RBC |
329.15 |
|
TOTAL INCOME |
$1009.15 |
|
|
|
|
EXPENSES |
|
|
Food |
566.27 |
|
Web Site |
111.46 |
|
xfer to Petty Cash |
0 |
|
Bank Service Charge |
0 |
|
TOTAL EXPENSE |
$677.73 |
|
|
|
|
BANK BALANCE Fidelity |
331.42 |
|
PETTY CASH |
191.52 |
|
TOTAL CASH |
$522.94 |
Items of Interest
SPARTA Schedule and Menu for 2014
contributed by Tommy Thomas and Chris Blackshire
Nov 4 - Chicken
Dec 2 - Subs
Dec. 30 - No Meeting, Happy Holidays
Improving z/OS Application Availability by
Managing Planned Outages
contributed by Ed Webb
"This IBM®
Redbooks® publication is intended to make System
Programmers, Operators, and Availability Managers aware of the
enhancements to recent releases of z/OS® and its major
subsystems in the area of planned outage avoidance. It is a
follow-on to, rather than a replacement for, z/OS Planned Outage
Avoidance Checklist, SG24-7328.
Its primary objective is to bring together in one place
information that is already available, but widely dispersed. It
also presents a different perspective on planned outage
avoidance. Most businesses care about application availability
rather than the availability of a given system. Also, a planned
outage is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as it does not
impact application availability. In fact, running for too long
without an IPL or subsystem restart may have a negative impact
on application availability because it impacts your ability to
apply preventive service. Therefore, we place more focus on
decoupling the ability to make changes and updates to your
system from IPLing or restarting your systems.
Table of contents
Chapter 1. Planned outage considerations
Chapter 2. Project planning and user experiences
Part 1. z/OS components
Chapter 3-17. z/OS enhancements
Part 2. z/OS middleware
Chapter 18. CICS considerations
Chapter 19. DB2 considerations
Chapter 20. IMS considerations
Chapter 21. WebSphere MQ for z/OS
Appendix A. Items requiring an IPL or recycle
Appendix B. DB2 UNIX file system maintenance considerations"
SHARE Opens Hotel Reservations for Seattle
March 1-6, 2015
contributed by Ed Webb
It's already time to think about SHARE in 2015.
Presentations and schedules are being finalized but you can
reserve a room at the Conference Hotel now. And all sessions
will be at the Sheraton Seattle Hotel in downtown. Make your
reservations via the SHARE website.
Remember that z/OS 2.2 is coming in 2015, and IBM may have
some other big z news soon. SHARE will be the place to get
the most accurate up-to-date info on z systems and software.
Networking with your peers at SHARE pays off at home as
well. Be sure that SHARE in Seattle and in Orlando are in
your organization's budget for 2015.
Make Security Lessons
Meaningful to Help Them Stick with Employees
contributed by Ed Webb
"Your mom might be behind the next great cyber-attack—and
she won’t even know it.
During his keynote address on security at SHARE in
Pittsburgh, Robert Andrews, co-founder and chief
information security officer for Mainstream Security,
detailed the ways criminals are co-opting computers to
propagate malware attacks.
Companies can protect their assets with all the greatest
technology in the world, but ultimately they’re still at
risk because of what they can’t control: human behavior.
“It’s probably not that we’re behind in security,” Andrews
said. “It’s that individuals are behind in security.”
Check out the rest of this SHARE
blog entry for more information.
SMF: An Important
Component of z/OS
contributed by Ed Webb
"z/OS provides more measurement data than any other
operating system, which is one of the great
strengths of this platform over others. These
measurements allow you to tune the system, debug
problems, chargeback for resources, provide
management reports to show resource usage and help a
capacity planner adequately forecast the future
needs. The majority of this wonderful information is
written to a data repository by the System
Management Facilities (SMF) component. This
component is used as a common receptacle of data
from other components of z/OS, such as CICS and DB2."
Read the rest of this SMF history and overview from
Cheryl Watson and Frank Kyne in Enterprise Systems
Media here.
The Mainframe is 50
'Ultimate
Virtualized System' is Key to Leveraging
Trending Technologies
contributed by Ed Webb
"The amount of money IBM bet on the
mainframe’s success—$5 billion—is the equivalent of
$200 billion in today’s dollars.
It was a bet that paid off—big time. System z
continues to be a dynamic force in driving future
enterprise IT innovation, said Bryan Foley, IBM’s
program director for System z strategy and Linux
business line manager during his presentation at
SHARE in Pittsburgh.
Statistics surrounding the mainframe’s continued
relevance have been oft repeated as it celebrated
its 50th anniversary this year—30 billion business
transactions processed each day; home to 80 percent
of the world’s corporate data; and $6 trillion in
credit card payments processed annually."
Check out the rest of this SHARE President's blog
entry here
at www.share.com.
Humor
Signs
contributed by Chris Blackshire
In a Podiatrist's office:
"Time
wounds all heels."
On a Septic Tank Truck:
Yesterday's Meals on Wheels
At an Optometrist's Office:
"If you don't see what
you're looking for, you've come to the right place."
On a Plumber's truck:
"We repair what your husband
fixed."
On another Plumber's truck:
"Don't sleep with a
drip. Call your plumber."
At a Tire Shop in Milwaukee :
"Invite us to your
next blowout."
On an Electrician's truck:
"Let us remove your
shorts."
In a Non-smoking Area:
"If we see smoke, we will
assume you are on fire and take appropriate action."
On a Maternity Room door:
"Push. Push. Push."
At a Car Dealership:
"The best way to get back on
your feet - miss a car payment."
Outside a Muffler Shop:
"No appointment necessary.
We hear you coming."
In a Veterinarian's waiting room:
"Be back in 5
minutes. Sit! Stay!"
At the Electric Company
"We would be delighted if
you send in your payment.
However, if you don't, you
will be."
In a Restaurant window:
"Don't stand there and be
hungry; come on in and get fed up."
In the front yard of a Funeral Home:
"Drive
carefully We'll wait."
At a Propane Filling Station:
"Thank heaven for
little grills."
And don't forget the sign at a Chicago Radiator
Shop:
"Best place in town to take a leak."
Sign on a large propane tank on a major
highway::::
"You just passed gas."
And the best one for last............
Sign on the
back of another Septic Tank Truck:
"Caution - This
Truck is full of Political Promises"
In The beginning
contributed by Randy Springs
In ancient Israel, it came to pass that a trader by the name of Abraham Com did take unto himself a healthy young wife by the name of Dorothy.
And Dot Com was a comely woman, Large of breast, broad of shoulder and long of leg. Indeed, she was often called Amazon Dot Com. And she said unto Abraham, her husband, "Why dost thou travel so far from town to town with thy goods when thou canst trade without ever leaving thy tent...?"
And Abraham did look at her as though she were several saddle bags short of a camel load, but simply said, "How, dear...?"
And Dot replied, "I will place drums in all the towns and drums in between to send messages saying what you have for sale, and they will reply telling you who hath the best price. The sale can be made on the drums and delivery made by Uriah's Pony Stable (UPS)."
Abraham thought long and decided he would let Dot have her way with the drums. And the drums rang out and were an immediate success. Abraham sold all the goods he had at the top price, without ever having to move from his tent.
To prevent neighboring countries from overhearing what the drums were saying, Dot devised a system that only she and the drummers knew. It was known as Must Send Drum Over Sound (MSDOS), and she also developed a language to transmit ideas and pictures - Hebrew To The People (HTTP).
And the young men did take to Dot Com's trading as doth the greedy horsefly take to camel dung. They were called Nomadic Ecclesiastical Rich Dominican Sybarites, or NERDS.
And lo, the land was so feverish with joy at the new riches and the deafening sound of drums that no one noticed that the real riches were going to that enterprising drum dealer, Brother William of Gates, who bought off every drum maker in the land. Indeed he did insist on drums to be made that would work only with Brother Gates' drumheads and drumsticks.
And Dot did say, "Oh, Abraham, what we have started is being taken over by others." And Abraham looked out over the Bay of Ezekiel, or eBay as it came to be known.
He said, "We need a name that reflects what we are." And Dot replied, "Young Ambitious Hebrew Owner Operators." "YAHOO," said Abraham. And because it was Dot's idea, they named it YAHOO Dot Com.
Abraham's cousin, Joshua, being the young Gregarious Energetic Educated Kid (GEEK) that he was, soon started using Dot's drums to locate things around the countryside. It soon became known as God's Own Official Guide to Locating Everything (GOOGLE).
That is how it all began. And that's the truth.
Don’t Forget the Next SPARTA Meeting
Tuesday, November 4, 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: Chicken, Drink, Dessert
Program:
zSAT Systems Analysis Tool
for z/OS
Speaker:
TPF Software
SPARTA News
P.O. Box 13194
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-3194
First Class Postage
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