If you're sat next to me on a plane you'll probably notice at take off and landing I do algebra puzzles. You may not have heard of the term "algebra puzzles" before and perhaps think the juxtaposition of the two words to be odd, but I think it apt...
(You may also think this whole post to be showing off, but that's a risk I take in sharing a passion I have.)
A classic problem... [More]
Tags:
maths
elegance
sudoku
futoshiki
kenken
puzzles
algebra
hashi
kakuro
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It's a popular suggestion that what separates the truly exceptional
person from the rest of us is 10,000 hours of "practice". In book form
I've seen it twice - in Matthew Syed's "Bounce" and in Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers" . Actually, to be fair, Matthew acknowledges his
original source so that's actually only one distinct source. (Life Lesson aside: Trace... [More]
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bounce
outliers
gladwell
10000
syed
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At one level Performance and Capacity Management and Systems Investigation are clearly linked: They share the same data. Or much of it at least. But I think they're linked in another way, too. Over the past few years I've gradually shifted emphasis towards Systems Investigation. But this has only been a slight shift, a "non modo sed etiam" and still only really mainframe. So I'm... [More]
Tags:
rmf
memory
cics
systems_investigation
performance
wlm
ddf
cpu
capacity
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I know of no customer who uses the full capacity of a zEC12, let alone a z13? 1 So why do we make them bigger each time? I should state this post is not in support of any product announcement; It’s just scratching an itch of mine. I think it’s an interesting topic; I hope you agree. What Is Bigger?
While this post isn’t exhaustive I think the main aspects are:... [More]
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I’ll admit I’ve found regular expressions a bit of a struggle.
I bet most people have.
For me it’s a matter of lots of arcane symbols that don’t have any inherent meaning.
Contrast with many programming languages, which do have some. It’s also not the case I don’t understand the concepts. Anyhow I’m edging towards the point where Production code will... [More]
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Here's the first-pass abstract slide for "I Know What You Did Last Summer". I'd be interested in your thoughts on it... What's The Point Of This Presentation? So, it's got a "tongue-in-cheek" title but what's it all about? I think one of the least appreciated aspects of z/OS and its middleware is the richness of instrumentation it gives you. Here I describe it and just some of... [More]
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While I was putting together the original three posts in this series a number of thoughts struck me, amongst which two really cried out for further investigation: I don't know how your XML data arrives on z/OS but quite a lot of scenarios don't have the data all as one document (file). XSLT looks complex - particularly if recursion does your head in. Thought 2 I'll deal with in a... [More]
Tags:
xslt
dfsort
xml
document()
saxon
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William Gibson's "The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed" applies very well to HTML5. It's even more true of CSS3. Despite that (or maybe because of it) it's a good time to dive into HTML5 - before everyone else does. So, a few months ago I bought, read and inwardly digested Mark Pilgrim's HTML5 Up and Running , published by O'Reilly in August 2010. I have a... [More]
Tags:
williamgibson
css
html
markpilgrim
html5
modernizr
dojo
review
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Inspired by two of Bob Leah's posts on QR Codes - here and here I started experimenting with creating and consuming QR codes. But what is a QR code? In short it's a two-dimensional barcode that can contain e.g plain text or a URL. In the latter case a QR code reader can pick up the URL - maybe from a real-world object - and open it in a browser.
Creating QR Codes In my experiment I created the... [More]
Tags:
ios
rfid
linux
qr
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I'm not an architect. I don't even play one on TV. In fact real architects would probably say I'm in the babble phase, architecturewise . But I've been involved in a few situations over the past year or so (and I'm involved in a couple starting round about now) which have led me to the following simple conclusion: Many installations would benefit from drawing up a Batch Architecture . I don't... [More]
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batch
architecture
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I hope you do. Special thanks are due to Bob Leah, Victoria Ovens and David Salinas for getting me this far: Bob created the new template I'm using (and it is discussed further here . Victoria created the new blog header graphic (of a z196 and a zBX) and David put it up for me. You'll have noticed I'm also blogging again - after a gap of about a year. (I talk about that somewhere in the middle of... [More]
Tags:
velocity
developerworks
apache
roller
blogging
lotus
connections
blogroll
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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]
Tags:
lla
smf
db2
z/os
hmc
automation
rmf
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I'm beginning to look at performance data slightly differently these days... As well as plotting things by Time Of Day (which our tools have done for 25 years) I'm beginning to plot things more directly with load. (Time Of Day is sort of code for With Load but not really - telling a story people can relate to more directly.) The first instance of this "with load" approach was plotting... [More]
Tags:
pi
velocity
wlm
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In Engineering - Part Zero I talked about the presentation that Anna Shugol and I have put together. That post described the general sweep of what we’re doing. This post, however, is more specific. It’s about Vertical Medium logical processors. To keep it (relatively) simple I’m describing a single processor pool. For example, the zIIP Pool. Everything here can be generalized, though it’s best to... [More]
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I seem to spend a lot of time working with DB2 DDF, and it’s no wonder: Many modern applications accessing DB2 are built using it, whether through JDBC 1 or some other connective software. This post is a by-product of a serious customer situation with DDF Performance, which I don’t intend to go into. As I say, it’s a byproduct, not the main event. Before I continue, I have a... [More]
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We released this episode a few days ago. But I only got round to writing this post today, 5 days later. That’s because I (and probably half of our listenership ) were involved in a rather urgent piece of customer business. There are some learning points from that one, but that’s for another day. So it goes, indeed. I’m continuing to experiment with recording techniques - to... [More]
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This summer has seen the most travel I think I’ve ever done, and I would imagine Marna feels much the same. We like to record together - which has made the logistics difficult. We actually met in the summer but thought recording in the same room would be difficult. We’ve stayed with each other a number of times but don’t want to record in our houses because the sound quality... [More]
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This post is an update to Batch DB2 And MQ The Easy Way , which I wrote back in 2016. There’s nothing wrong with what I wrote then - but there’s something extra I want to impart now. In that post I said you can answer the question “What are the big CPU DB2 jobs accessing this DB2 subsystem?” If you substitute “MQ” for “DB2” you can answer the... [More]
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This episode really has been a long time coming. If I reflect on why, there are two things… The main one is our schedules. Marna and I, as you’ll see, have been all over the place. The minor one is that - until about a month ago - I wasn’t on a creative streak. Nothing major, it happens. And I’m certainly on one now. We certainly hadn’t got bored of doing this - and... [More]
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“What is this DB2 subsystem for?” is an important question - at least to me. And explaining this topic over lunch to a friend of mine who was a DB2 developer, convinced me it has more general importance. If you’re a DB2 sysprog or DB2 the answer is probably well known to you 1 . If you’re not a DB2 person it’s probably not so obvious. Something worth noting at this... [More]
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