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Master the Mainframe Contest 2009

United States and Canada (excluding Quebec)

Master the Mainframe 2009

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Welcome to Part 3!

Approximate time to completion: Weeks to months

You must complete Part 1 and Part 2 of the contest before beginning Part 3.

The objective of this part of the contest is to get you involved much deeper with the workings of the z/OS mainframe system. You will be tackling issues that occur in real-world IT shops.

Part 3 is set up as a series of increasingly difficult challenges. IBM does not necessarily expect contestants to successfully complete every challenge. Each Part 3 task is assigned a point value for successful completion, with partial credit awarded for partial task completion.

The five students who manage to successfully complete the most Part 3 tasks will get to choose between a Samsung 22" LCD HDTV and a Lenovo S10-2 netbook computer. In addition, the top three winners will receive a two-day expenses-paid trip to the IBM mainframe lab in Poughkeepsie, NY.

Part 3 of the contest ends at midnight on 29 Dec 2009. No extra points are awarded for finishing early, so take your time and make sure you complete the challenges correctly. Winners will be notified on or about 02 Feb 2010.

Good luck!

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Part 3: Real-world challenge

Unlike the previous parts of the contest, the instructions for Part 3 reside on the contest mainframe system itself.

If you'd like to throw your hat into the ring for Part 3, from ISPF primary option 6 (the TSO command line), enter the following command:

    submit 'zos.public.jcl(part3)'

There's no turning back now! Well, there is, but why would you want to? This command will generate the data sets you need to compete in Part 3. Enjoy!

What will you learn as a result of participating in Part 3?

Applied knowledge of:

  1. z/OS JCL (Tasks 1-10)
  2. z/OS SORT Utility (Tasks 11-16)
  3. SQL using DB2 for z/OS (Tasks 17-20)
  4. z/OS RACF Security and REXX (Task 21)

These topics were chosen because of their value to large enterprise information technology and service organizations. If you manage to make it through Part 3, you will have distinguished yourself as someone with applied knowledge in topic areas of interest to many large enterprise employers.

After you've run the command to get started on Part 3, you'll find the Part 3 instructions in IBM####.PART3.README. The challenges are designed to be followed in order. The first challenge instruction is in IBM####.PART3.README(TASK001). You may download and print the challenge instructions, or view the challenge instructions using your workstation.

If you'd like to FTP all of the Part 3 instructions to your workstation, here's a quick way to do it:

  1. From your workstation command prompt (denoted by > here), enter the command:
    > mkdir contest
  2. Now change directories to your new contest folder: > cd contest
  3. FTP into the contest system: > ftp 192.86.32.16
  4. Log in using your contest ID and password
  5. From the FTP prompt (denoted by ftp> here), change directories to the Part 3 readme: ftp > cd 'zos.contest.part3.readme'
  6. Enter this command: ftp> prompt
  7. Get everything in the data set: ftp> mget *
  8. Quit FTP: ftp> quit
  9. Give the files a .txt entension: > rename task* task*.txt

Now you'll have the instructions on your workstation to print or view as you please. For all Part 3 challenges, substitute IBM#### with your user ID, just as you've been doing all along.

The Master the Mainframe Contest Team congratulates you for making it this far and wishes you the best of luck through all of the Part 3 challenges. We look forward to seeing your submissions!

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