It's been an awfully long time since I wrote When Good Work Doesn't Go To zIIP / zAAP Heaven . And too long since I posted anything at all. In fact I had a bunch of posts in my brain until this morning when a customer asked me a question which turned into this blog post. (Those posts are still in my brain and will probably see the light of day eventually, including one based on a customer... [More]
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pm12256
gcp
projectcpu
ipsec
smf101
zaap
db2
ifahonorpriority
ifacrossover
smf72
ddf
rmf
ziip
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This may be stating the obvious - but I wonder to whom it actually is obvious... I've been doing quite a lot of work with batch job timings and CPU recently. (Everything I'm about to say is equally true of steps.) It's interesting to think about the effects of faster engines versus more engines (a question I haven't been asked recently) and whether a customer needs more capacity or just faster... [More]
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cpu
smf101
trace
smf30
db2
accounting
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There've been times in the past when a request for extra data in SMF has been met by "you can issue a DISPLAY command to get that".
(Another variant is "you can go to the HMC for that".) I'm here to tell you why I don't think that's a brilliant answer: Such a command is a point-in-time thing.
Systems nowadays are much more dynamic than they were. Something as simple as... [More]
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smf
rmf
hmc
db2
z/os
lla
automation
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( Scroll down if you're not interested in DB2 ) This past week I've been updating our SQL Analysis code to cope with Unicode SQL statements. (If you bind a package or plan once you've gone to DB2 Version 8 New Function Mode the statement text is stored in the Catalog in Unicode.) These statements are in Unicode UTF-8 which is extremely similar to ASCII. So I snaffled some existing code of mine... [More]
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utf-8
ebcdic
unicode
dfsort
ascii
nfm
db2
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It's been almost four years since I wrote DB2 Data Sharing and XCF Job Name .
It mostly stands the test of time but there are a couple of things I want to bring up. I was in the DB2 Development lab a couple of days ago, talking with a couple of developer friends about DB2 Data Sharing and XCF.
They know DB2 Data Sharing and IRLM much better than I do but XCF not so much.
(It's probable that XCF... [More]
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cpu
irlm
xcf
db2
smf30
rmf
smf
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I was lucky enough to be in Silicon Valley Lab for DB2 BootCamp last week. There I ran into a DB2 developer I've worked very successfully with in the past - John Tobler. (He's the guy I look to for questions and issues with DB2 SMF data.) We had a good discussion about something I'd personally like to see in DB2 Accounting Trace - more WLM information - and this post is as a result of this... [More]
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rmf
db2
smf101
performance_index
dbm1
pi
wlm
qwacwlme
smf72
ddf
tcb
accounting_trace
dist
smf
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Back in May I wrote about a new batch residency planned for this October and invited good people to apply to join the team. It's been very pleasing how many people applied to be residents and the high quality of the entrants: It was genuinely difficult to pick the eventual team. We also had to reduce the scope a bit - which was a disappointment to both Frank Kyne and I. So, if you didn't get... [More]
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batch
residency
cloning
gse
cobol
db2
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As previously discussed I'm often in a situation of trying to make sense of a set of job-related SMF data. Even though it may be your own installation's data, you're probably confronted with what I like to call “a journey of discovery” occasionally, too. I'm always looking for what I can discern from the data. 1 And, when confronted with a set of data about batch jobs, I go into overdrive. This... [More]
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smf101
db2
batch
smf30
smf
clones
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When tuning DB2 batch it's important to know which SMF 101 Accounting Trace record corresponds to which job step. A few years ago I wrote code to do this. It works fine for all z/OS DB2 Batch except that originated by IMS. Here's how it works: Find all the Type 30 Step-End records for a given job name. Find the Type 101 Accounting Trace records for which the Correlation ID in the 101 record... [More]
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accounting
ims
trace
db2
batch
smf30
smf101
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Back in z/OS R.9 RMF Parallel Sysplex New Fields (in 2007) I mentioned a new field: R742MJOB (XCF Member Job Name.) At the time I had no real customer data so I could only espouse the HOPE that this field would be useful. (When I asked for it to be added to the SMF 74 Subtype 2 record it seemed to me it probably would be.) Now that z/OS R.9 is "mainstream" I'm seeing lots of data at this level.... [More]
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sysplex
rmf
irlm
db2
xcf
r742mjob
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So, I'm about to start writing. At last! As a team we had a discussion yesterday about how to deal with performance numbers. One of the roles I'm playing on the team is "the guy who writes about performance numbers". So we came to the following conclusions: We really can't talk about products made by other people - such as SAS/MXG or TMON for DB2. That's right out - because of our basic provenance... [More]
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parallel
db2
redbook
residency
sysplex
twitter
smf
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I was contacted by the team updating the SG24-7083 "DB2 Stored Procedures: Through The Call And Beyond" this past week. Their question was quite straightforward: "One of the statements in the book, in the chapter on WLM address space management states: To help analyze the use of resources by different types of stored procedures, you should name the server address spaces in such a way that it is... [More]
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procedures
nested
wlm
stored
db2
udf
z/os
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Namik Hrle, the IBM Distinguished Engineer for DB2 for SAP, presented yesterday to an internal audience. (It's the first time I'd seen him present and he's a very dynamic presenter.) His presentation prompted me to download the Enhancing SAP by Using DB2 9 for z/OS Red Book . One item I'd like to pull out is the enhancements in DB2 Version 9 to RLF . RLF will cancel SQL execution for an... [More]
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rlf
sap
db2
db2v9
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If you think this title is obscure bear in mind the original working title was "Send In The Hobgoblins". 1 When I started to write - actually before the "mind mapping" stage - it was going to be all about inconsistency in the way bits of systems are named. You'll see some of that reflected in the finished article (pun intended) but the post has mostly gone in a different... [More]
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virtualstorage
cics
wlm
z/os
cpu
mq
rmf
db2
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The other three residents are busy doing extensive setup work - and we hope to have some nice measurements later on. (I'm not sure how much later on there actually is, mind.) :-) So I have no RMF or DB2 SMF to play with yet. :-( Meanwhile I'm beginning to come up to speed again after the glorious experience of recovering from moving five time zones to the west. :-) So I actually got to writing... [More]
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residency
parallel
db2
redbook
twitter
sysplex
smf
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Following on from Coupling Facility Async / Sync Thresholds - They Are A'Changin' I've been informed by Development there is a new improved write up on how the Dynamic Sync/Async conversion works in Chapter 6 of the z/OS Release 9: Setting Up A Sysplex manual. I've read it and it is VERY good. One thing to pull out is that there isn't just one threshold... There are different thresholds for Lock... [More]
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gbp
db2
z/os
sync
cf
duplexing
thresholds
async
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As many of you know I've been very fond of BatchPipes/MVS (aka "Pipes") down the years (17 to be precise). So I'm pleased to see APAR PK34251: ADDING BATCHPIPES SUBSYS SUPPORT TO TEMPLATE UTILITY describes some new support in the DB2 Load Utility (as driven by the Template utility) which makes it much easier to use with BatchPipes/MVS. (For reference here's the BatchPipes For OS/390 Version 2... [More]
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excp
bsam
qsam
ef
compression
striping
db2
utility
load
pipes
batchpipes/mvs
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I'm in a session where we're going through DB2 Version 9 migration considerations - and right now there's a table on display with changes to DSNZPARM defaults. One of real value is that STATIME has changed to 5 minutes from 30. Unless you've overridden it you should now get much better information at the DB2 subsystem level. This does, of course, mean 12 sets of Statistics Trace records an hour,... [More]
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db2
db2v9
statime
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Over the years I’ve written emails with data collection requirements dozens of times, with varying degrees of clarity. It would be better, wouldn’t it, to write it once. I don’t think I can get out of the business of writing such emails entirely but here’s a goodly chunk of it. Another thing that struck me is that the value of some types of data has increased enormously... [More]
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z/os
ftp
smf30
rmf
smf
db2
smf101
mq
cics
batch
wlm
dfsort
terse
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You wouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket, CICSwise, would you?
A naive reading of the CICS TS 5.1 announcement materials might lead you to suppose you could .
This post is about thinking about your CICS region portfolio in the light of this announcement. While every CICS release introduces capabilities that makes it worthwhile to review your region portfolio,
5.1 majors on... [More]
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db2
cics
smf42-6
mq
smf30
smf110
smf
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As you will’ve seen in
WLM Response Time Distribution Reporting With RMF I’ve been thinking about WLM Response Time goals quite a bit recently.
And this post continues the train of thought. It’s very easy to think of WLM Service Classes as being self contained.
For many that’s true - and only their own performance numbers need to be considered for us to understand their... [More]
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wlm
smf72–3
smf30
smf
db2
smf101
was
mq
rmf
cics
omvs
ims
ddf
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When I first heard of Flash Express as part of the zEC12 announcement -
some time before announcement - I thought of one use case above all,
and one of particularly poignant resonance with some of my readers: Dump capture amelioration. Then, in the marketing materials, I heard of others.
And the discussions have grown more numerous recently.
So it’s time I expressed (pardon the pun) my... [More]
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memory
dump
z196
dfsort
stgtest
zec12
flash
paging
sysevent
db2
zflash
express
cics
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There was a time before blogging and what I'm about to talk about is something I used to explain quite often back in those days. Reminded by a current customer situation - and needing to explain it again - I thought it time to do it this way. (Here I'm presenting a simplified view, but one that covers the salient features that might help you.) The CICS / DB2 Connection code provides a number of... [More]
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smf101
reuse
db2
c1
thread
class2
class1
smf
accounting
c2
cics
cicspa
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Every year I like to debut one new presentation, though that isn't a firm rule:
In 2012 I debuted
"Send In The Clones" (SITC) 1 and
"I Know What You Did Last Summer" (IKWYDLS), but actually
only the first one was written in 2012. Of course presentations are "slow trains coming": I widely trailed my desire to write
IKWYDLS in 2011 and finally revealed it early this year.
(In fact it... [More]
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db2
cics
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Round about now you'd be expecting posts to be geared towards the recent zEC12 announcement, or perhaps CICS TS 5.1 or the DB2 11 Preview, or IDAA V3.
So what this post is about will probably have slipped by unnoticed.
After all you don't spend all your time looking for obscure New Function APARs, do you? But I think some of you will find this one of value, or at least quite interesting. (I... [More]
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qrtcb
db2
smf30
mq
qr
tcb
ukcmg
smf
zec12
cics
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I've written extensively in the past about what you can glean about batch suites from SMF, most notably SMF Type 30. While I don't believe SMF alone can give you the full dependency network (complete with validation) I've just added some analysis to my code that gets me a little closer. As you're probably never going to run my code the bit that would be interesting is the kind of inferences it's... [More]
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smf64
smf
batch
smf30
dependency
smf15
vsam
non-vsam
db2
smf62
smf14
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This post is about unusual ways of using the SMF 30 Usage Data information, some of which you're certain to want if you're managing z/OS systems' performance. A long time ago I noticed character strings in SMF 30 records that looked like product names. (As is my wont I was looking at the raw Type 30 records for a different purpose and spotted them.) Some time later I figured out these were Usage... [More]
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z/os
was
chargeback
smf
usage
smf30
db2
cics
websphere
mq
ims
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I'm not a capacity planner but I play one on TV 1 sometimes. A customer asked me about the subject of zAAP Capacity Planning so I thought I'd post a few thoughts here. (Almost everything I say here is equally true of a zIIP.) The main point is I don't think it terribly different from regular CPU Capacity Planning. But there are some quirks: While we do have queuing we also have Crossover. But at... [More]
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ziip
rmf
zaap
db2
zaap-on-ziip
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I can tell when a CICS region came up - without looking at CICS-specific instrumentation. What's more I can repeat the "trick" for any of MQ, DB2, IMS, etc - and so can you . I've just started work on a new piece of reporting. I'll call it "raddrspc" as that's the name of the REXX EXEC that I'm writing. It's about address spaces - most notably long-running ones. In the... [More]
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interval
dossier
uptime
ims
addressspace
smf
db2
mq
smf30
job
cics
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You'd think it would be pretty simple to draw a line. Right? This post discusses an enhancement I'd like to make to my current reporting - and I'm pretty sure that technically I can do it. The question is whether I should . Consider my current "Memory by address space within Service Class" graph. Here's a sample: And here's what I think I might like it to look like: Obviously the line's... [More]
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excp
rexx
memory
cics
smf
interval
gddm
mxg
smf30
rmf
cpu
slr
db2
smf72-3
smf72
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