Apologies for being away. For a while I couldn't get the blog to operate - as an author. And then I gave up trying. :-( Count this as a "testing 1-2-3" post but also as notice I intend to back with more (hopefully useful) content soon. MUCH has happened in the "intermission". :-)
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I'm reporting what I'm learning (or I think is significant) in conference sessions on Twitter. My Id is "MartinPacker" and I'm using the Hashtag "#zOS09" to tag my posts. Feel free to follow along. In principle you don't even need to sign up to Twitter to do this. It seems more immediate than posting here. Oh, and feel free to comment on Twitter using the same tag.
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twitter
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Here's another "For Beginners" post to encourage people to just leap in and try it... Javascript is a language popularly used for such things as web pages with some programming in them (and that includes frameworks like dojo), building Firefox extensions, and the Adobe AIR (desktop) runtime. As it happens I'm pretty familiar with Javascript anyway - having done all 3 of the above. This post shows... [More]
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unix
java
z/os
rhino
javascript
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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
r742mjob
xcf
rmf
irlm
db2
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To whoever (In the USA I think) Googled "what is REMOVECC" and got to this blog let me give you my thoughts on the matter. (And yes I know, it being a search, you might never come back to read this.) To understand REMOVECC you have to understand that the "CC" refers to ASA (American Standards Association) Carriage Control, described here . ASA (formerly ANSI) control characters appear in Position... [More]
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header1
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blkcch1
asa
dfsort
referer
trailer1
header3
outfil
ansi
removecc
header2
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trailer2
rdw
blkcct1
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For whoever got to my blog with this Google search here's how you sort data without a header: First you need to be using z/OS DFSORT Release 10 or to have applied the PTFs for UK90013 (July 2008). Second, the vehicle for doing this is ICETOOL rather than DFSORT itself. Use the new DATASORT operator. Here's an example: If you code DATASORT FROM(DD1) TO(DD) FIRST(3) USING(CTL1) and code a CTL1CNTL... [More]
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icetool
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dfsort
datasort
outfil
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So here's yet another way of parsing the WLM XML Service Definition. This time it's on z/OS, using DFSORT. Relatively recent features in DFSORT have made it easier to do useful things with XML. In this example I've made some attempt to make the output pretty - by creating a HTML table. Below is the SYSIN you need to parse the <SchedulingEnvironment> elements. I'm assuming you know how to... [More]
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fixlen
xml
parse
outfil
when=group
endbefr
removecc
uk90007
jfy
ifthen
wlm
uk90013
startaft
uk90006
dfsort
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It's approaching conference season again - at least the UKCMG / European System z Conference portion of it. Bearing that in mind I want to share this article with you: "Professor Encourages Students to Pass Notes During Class -- via Twitter". It's well worth reading the comments that follow the article. They're rather more enlightening and illustrative than the (short) article itself. I've been in... [More]
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twitter
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Here's another way to process a WLM Service Definition - once you've got it into XML format. XSLT (XML Stylesheet Transformations if you prefer) is another technology that's been around for a while. In simple terms you write another piece of XML (the stylesheet) that describes how to transform your original XML into something else. There's a lot of flexibility in this but the example in this post... [More]
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db2
wlm
applicationenvironments
xml
storedprocedures
xpath
xslt
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In Workload Manager Policy in XML Format - Part I I showed you how you can use PHP to extract Classification Rules information from the WLM Service Definition (once converted to XML format). This post gives an example of extracting a different set of information from the XML Service Definition, using javascript and, in particular, XMLHttpRequest (sometimes known as XHR). There is a slightly... [More]
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wlm
xhr
javascript
xmlhttprequest
xml
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This isn't particularly new - but I'm guessing most people who work with WLM don't know about this... For some time now you've been able to download a java application that enables you to convert your WLM Service Definition to and from XML. Perhaps more importantly, the application provides a nice way to edit the Service Definition - and that is actually its main purpose. You can... [More]
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wlm
xpath♠
xml
php
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Another 6 months on and another HackDay... Hackday6 was on 24 October - and being distracted by little things such as GSE Conference and an important customer situation I haven't blogged about it yet. So, a little late, here goes... Many of you will know that RMF has a WebPortal for monitoring performance and capacity usage. And you'll know that the z10 processor's HMC is web-based (though I don't... [More]
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hmc
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hackday
twitter
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With a couple of working days to go before the deadline I've completed my two presentations for Expo. As usual I've added some new stuff, based on new technologies and some situations I've encountered. And rather than throwing older stuff out I've moved most of it to backup foils. While I'm prepared to present the backup material I don't expect to have time to in the sessions. But at least you'll... [More]
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cpu
memory
hashtag
twitter
z/os
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Well, how many do you have? I'll admit to 4 on my Windows XP Laptop (and 2 versions of 1 on my ASUS EEE PC, running Linux)... I firmly believe in having an "emergency browser". At 0ne time that would have been Internet Explorer - for two reasons: To recover a broken browser. As I mainly use Firefox Nightly builds I sometimes get cases where I need a fresh install of a prior nightly to get me out... [More]
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safari
browser
firefox
google
chrome
javascript
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In recent releases RMF have put the machine serial number into both SMF Type 74 Subtype 4 (Coupling Facility Activity) and SMF Type 70 Subtype 1 (CPU Activity). Actually we get two fields in each case: Plant Number and Sequence Number, which you can put together as eg "51-12345". Soon we'll get another piece of the jigsaw: Partition Number in 74-4. This is a small change but a nice useful one...... [More]
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coupling
smf
smf744
smf70
parallel
facility
rmf
sysplex
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Since I got back off vacation in L'Hérault in late August I've been working on adding z10 support to our CPU analysis code. It's quite a substantial set of changes - and I don't think I'm finished yet . But I'd like to share with you what I've learned so far. But first let's briefly review what's changed with z10. (This is a very brief review and not a tutorial on the subjects mentioned.)... [More]
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cpu
smf70
rmf
smf
z10
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As I mentioned in this blog post DFSORT just shipped a new FINDREP function to do "find and replace". I mentioned an example of where I might use it to replace SMFIDs in SMF records. That example generally works well. But suppose (say, for SMF 42-6 Data Set Performance records) I want to replace "SYS1" with "MVSA" but don't want to replace "SYS1." with "MVSA.". There's something useful about... [More]
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smf
find
dfsort
replace
findrep
smf42
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Yesterday DFSORT announced a new set of functions - as PTF UK90013. The documentation for it can be found here . Every year or so there's a new set of DFSORT functions - and generally they're "out of cycle" with z/OS releases - although they are incorporated into subsequent releases of z/OS. This means that fewer of you will know about the functions, particularly as we don't make a big fuss about... [More]
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icetool
dfsort
datasort
findrep
symbols
z/os
select
subset
occur
display
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count
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A couple of days ago I attended the pilot of a "Web 2.0 and System z" workshop in the Boeblingen lab. I'm pleased to say the room was full - both with IBMers and non-IBMers. And I think my presentation - which was basically a rant about Web 2.0 Behaviours and why we should adopt them as mainframe folks :-) - went OK. One of the things that was interesting about it was that on greeting Luis Suarez... [More]
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web20
twitter
2.0
web
z/os
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In the same meeting with RMF Development as ERBSCAN / ERBSHOW was discussed we talked about Parallel Sysplex instrumentation. (Both XCF and Coupling Facility aspects.) One thing I hadn't noticed is the appearance of Subchannel Busy Percentage as a number in the following three places: In Monitor III In the Spreadsheet Reporter As Overview Condition ("SUBCHBP") I think you can do useful work with... [More]
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xcf
coupling
rmf
sysplex
facility
subchannel
parallel
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I mentioned ERBSCAN and ERBSHOW in this post from January . This is a handy pair of tools for displaying SMF records - most notably the ones produced by RMF. For the uninitiated you type ERBSCAN in ISPF 3.4 against an SMF data set and it pops up a list of SMF records. Typing ERBSHOW followed by the record number formats the record - especially well if it's one that RMF produced. And the prior post... [More]
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smf
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erbshow
z/os
erbscan
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Many of you will have, by now, installed the Adobe AIR runtime. Most probably it will be to run something like Twhirl. At this point many of you will be asking "what's Twhirl?" If I said it was a nice desktop application that makes using Twitter so much easier I hope you don't ask "what's Twitter?" :-) So, we're beginning to see these desktop applications coded using Adobe AIR, which stands for... [More]
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air
twitter
html
xulrunner
programming
twhirl
asus
dojo
eee
flex
xml
adobe
notepad++
mozilla
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The same Kevin Keller I mentioned in this blog post is running a one day pilot of a "Web 2.0 and System z" workshop on July 8th, in IBM Böblingen. It's designed for customers, though some of the audience will undoubtedly be IBMers. I've looked at the agenda and, while I'm on it, it's a great agenda. :-) Actually it has the highly-acclaimed Luis Suarez on the agenda as well. (I'm looking... [More]
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2.0
web
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web20
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Take a look at my German colleague Kevin Keller's new blog in Web 2.0 and z/OS. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at what runs on z/OS that the rest of the world would regard as modern . :-) I say "modern" rather than "Web 2.0" because I feel the latter term is generally overused. What is really to the point is quite how much stuff could (and in many cases should) be implemented on z/OS, e.g.... [More]
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z/os
web
blog
purexml
web20
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Hats off to Jonathan Feinberg (who's created a number of neat sites inside IBM) for creating Wordle. The above is a nice depiction of the keywords for my blog. Click on it for a bigger version. Go to here to make your own from any sets of text you like.
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wordle
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I'm not sure if anyone's done this before. Certainly I've not seen any results... We're beginning to write up some tests the "A Team" (Alain and Pierre) ran before their return to France. Which provides me with some test data. Fortunately I had a stab at mapping the new fields this data contains. One in particular is Stucture CPU (R744SETM)... So, I got to plotting CPU per request against request... [More]
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coupling
parallel
sysplex
facility
structure
cpu
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It's fair to say I've written very little in terms of book words these past two days. That's because I've been "doing research" on how the cache structure counters really work. "Doing research" is a euphemism for "finding out how the heck the darned thing works". Which is in itself a positive thing to do - but it does rather get in the way of writing stuff. :-( There is a section in the SMF 74... [More]
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redbook
facility
coupling
smf
parallel
sysplex
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I had to eat a little bit of humble pie today - because I made an elementary mistake. I'm going to share it with you - to save you making it, too. :-) And I'm very sure I'm not going to make it in a customer situation. (Residencies are great for making mistakes in a safe environment.) :-) In CFLEVEL 15 and z/OS Release 9 RMF you get a new field at the structure level: R744SETM. This is the CPU... [More]
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z/os
sysplex
cf
parallel
coupling
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Sometimes reading the SMF manual buys you less than you thought. I had completely ignored a nice little field - and the code I inherited to analyse SMF 74 Subtype 4 Coupling Facility data ignored it as well. R744SLEC in the Request Data Section for a structure is described by the text "Lock structure only: lock table entry characteristic". Can you guess what it is? :-) If I told you it was a one... [More]
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coupling
redbook
facility
parallel
sysplex
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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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parallel
smf
sysplex
residency
db2
redbook
twitter
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