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All posts
ERBSCAN / ERBSHOW - More Good News
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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First Impressions Of Programming With Adobe AIR
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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Web 2.0 and System z Pilot Workshop
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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Kevin Keller's Web 2.0 and z/OS Blog
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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Wordle
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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Coupling Facility Structure CPU - An Interesting Test
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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Cache Structure Information
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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Coupling Facility Structure CPU Time - Initial Investigations
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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A Minor Fact About Lock Structures
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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Is It The Structure Or The Content That's Important?
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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Performance Numbers and the Redbook
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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Goodbye UKCMG, Hello Poughkeepsie
I feel like I'm on "home turf" at UKCMG... My use of English can be looser :-) and it's so nice to catch up customers with whom I've a long and (I hope) fruitful history. I did my (slightly updated) "Memory Matters" and "Much Ado About CPU" presentations - and I really do lose track of how much change there's been in each of them (though it seems to me I fiddle with them A LOT. :-) Actually I sat... [More]
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System z Technical Conference - Dresden
I'm going to try something different this year – and composing this using OpenOffice Writer on my new ASUS EEE PC while flying home is certainly different. But what's new is not documenting all the bits and pieces I learnt. Instead I'm going to give some impressions: On Monday afternoon we had an enforced evacuation from the conference centre and much of the environs – because of a World War II... [More]
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Misunderstood Coupling Facility Commands
I wonder how many of you recognise the terms "READ_COCLASS", "WARM", "RFCOM","WRITE_DATALIST" and "CASTOUT_DATALIST". Granted that in that list are two pairs of terms that I believe to be synonymous, but all five are relatively recent enhancements to Parallel Sysplex infrastructure that have a positive impact on DB2 Data Sharing performance (or at least the management of Performance). As I... [More]
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System z Technical Conference - Dresden
Tomorrow I fly to Dresden for the annual European System z Technical Conference. It's at just the time of year when I can decide in my head that Spring has sprung and that Summer won't be long coming. :-) This is a great conference and I always enjoy attending it (and presenting at it). Talking of which, I have three sessions this year: Much Ado About CPU which has a fair modicum of new stuff,... [More]
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My HackDay 5 Project - z/OS System Logger Analysis
As some of you will know IBM has a twice-yearly "HackDay" programming fest. And the latest - HackDay5 - was last Friday. Couched as a competition it isn't really... It's a heck of a sight more cooperative than that. (Else I wouldn't have got involved.) I've participated in all five we've had over the past two years. And it's been great fun. This time - for the second time - I've physically gone to... [More]
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Moron SPAM :-)
We've been issued new guidance: Delete SPAM rather than mark it invisible. Disallow posting comments after, say, 30 days. The latter appears to work at the individual entry level. Three of my entries have become particularly troublesome (for some unknown reason). So I've set them to "no more comments". If you find a comment of yours bounced then please do let me know. I'm sure we can fix it.... [More]
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ERBSCAN / ERBSHOW - A Parameter You Might Not Know
Very few people spend as much time as I do down in the guts of individual SMF records. But for those who do ERBSCAN / ERBSHOW is an invaluable tool... ERBSCAN, issued in ISPF 3.4 against an SMF data set, presents you with a list of SMF records and some VERY high level information. Such as the date and time the record was cut, the SMF ID and the record type and subtype. ERBSHOW nnnn, issued from... [More]
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Outstupided - Part Umpteen
Every once in a while :-) I do something really dumb... Thanks to Debra and family for the bath bomb... Rather than throw it in the bath wrapped I chose to cut it open and pour the contents in. The result? Rather like bathing with dead flies. :-) And, no, I was sober at the time. :-)
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An Unexpected Benefit of Pornospam
As I've mentioned before I'm using Roller's "Referer URL" page - for my developerWorks blog - to analyse where my blog hits are coming from. (It's an informal exercise because I can only really work with hits that involve a search engine of some sort - and some 80% of my hits are said to be "direct".) Recently I've had a rash of "pornospam" comments to my blog. (As previously noted I've a way of... [More]
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I've A Little Button To Banish SPAMmers
Occasionally you'll (hopefully briefly) see SPAM comments on this blog. I'm grown up about this sort of thing and just remove the comments when I see them. I hope you're grown up enough to cope with this irritating phenomenon as well. But I've gotten fed up with having to mark these comments as SPAM. So I added some code to my Firefox extension to create a little button on my "Comment Management"... [More]
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WPS and MXG
Thanks to Oliver Robinson for pointing this out to me: In MXG Newsletters Numbers 50 and 51 Barry Merrill discusses MXG / WPS support in what I think is a detailed and fair way. (Oliver, for the record, works for WPC who develop WPS.) Barry and I discussed WPS and MXG over a year ago. I think WPS has come a long way in this time and is now a very credible alternative to SAS for many applications,... [More]
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Mashinations
Nowadays - actually thenadays :-) but more so nowadays - the value of a web page is related to how well structured it is. Well structured from a mashup programmer's point of view... As I often say you have to assume that people will want to take your web pages and mash them up in ways you never thought likely. If your web page is hard to navigate, extract material from, etc then people will use... [More]
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Where My Searches Come From
This is really just a test of some Firefox Extension code of mine... but it's kind of interesting in its own right... The following is a table containing the country-level summary of Search URLs that somehow get a reader to my blog on any given day. (I have another table ranking search terms.) Most days the USA and India are at the top of the list. And there's usually a smattering of other... [More]
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A Great Song For A Great Cause
!This is a great song for a great cause... I saw Queen + Paul Rodgers play this in 2005 in Hyde Park. Actually Paul did nothing - Roger Taylor sang it. :-) But now they've worked on it as part of their current studio sessions and have rushed it out - for free . So download, play it, donate and tell your friends.... Get it from here and read all about it . Now I've Downloaded And Listened To It I... [More]
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Memories of DFSORT OUTFIL
In September 1997 DFSORT Release 13 was shipped (to coincide with the release of OS/390 Release 4). It took a nice idea from Syncsort and extended it. In case you didn't know OUTFIL allows you to read an input data set (and perhaps sort it) and write to multiple output files from the resulting records - perhaps selecting subsets of the records and reformatting them (and differently to each output... [More]
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Memories of Pipes
!Somehow I seem to have end up writing a "Memories of..." series of blog posts. That wasn't the intention but a set of threads on IBM-MAIN Listserver got me to thinking about these nice venerable technologies - VIO, Hiperbatch, Batch LSR and Pipes. By couching these posts in terms of "memories of" it sounds like they're perhaps obsolete. With the possible exception of Hiperbatch that probably... [More]
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Not Boris Johnson but a Chat Show In Secondlife?
Thanks to Kevin Aires for pointing this out to me... "Boris in Wonderland" is a chat show in Secondlife - hosted by one Boris Frampton of IBM. Go here for the first episode. Andy Stanford-Clark (Ginger Mandelbrot in Secondlife) is interviewed about his applications and creations. The Monty Python quote "look out there are Llamas" is relevant here - but you'll just have to roll the video to find... [More]
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Another Great Blog - Eightbar
If you have any interest in novel, webby or metaverse things you'll like the Hursley Eightbar blog .
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Gameframes Post Updated
I updated my April 2007 Gameframe post . I'm not sure if the mechanism you're using to follow my blog will've alerted you to this. Nothing desperately fundamental but it has been almost 7 months.
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My Favourite Wikipedia Page
My Favourite Wikipedia Page: List of fractals by Hausdorff dimension
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Peggy Zagelow's Blog
I'm very pleased to note Peggy also has a developerWorks blog. She's one of the leading lights in DB2 Development. Her blog is here
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Memories of Batch LSR
Another trip down memory lane - prompted by the thread on IBM-MAIN of Batch LSR vs Hiperbatch. Batch LSR started out as a prototype by Paul Dorn of the IBM Washington Systems Center. He was contributing to a book on writing a subsystem but also trying to solve a problem with Batch VSAM tuning. So Batch LSR started out as an example of a subsystem. (I don't recall a rash of subsystems written by... [More]
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DYNDISP and DDF?
To whoever it is in Denmark that's repeatedly hitting my blog today with a search for "dyndisp" and "ddf" I'd love to know what it is that is causing you to search for those two terms together. As you're on my (day job) patch perhaps I should be talking to you directly. So feel free to contact me by clicking on this link . (I'm hoping the "mailto:" URL form works on your system.) And, yes, I am... [More]
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z/OS R.9 RMF Parallel Sysplex New Fields
I've just re-read the XCF (74-2) and CF (74-4) sections of the z/OS Release 9 SMF Manual. There are some nice things in there... XCF (74-2) Number of buffer 1KB blocks by path (R742PUSE). This should tell you whether memory waste by over-specifying CLASSLEN is a problem. And some of the other scenarios. Member job name (R742MJOB). I'd like to believe this would tell us which IRLM a given member... [More]
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Memories of Hiperbatch
It's nice to see a flurry of activity in IBM-MAIN about Hiperbatch. And it's more for the emotional reason of reminiscence than for any stunning insights that I'm blogging about it... Back in 1988 I ran a technical project in my then customer, Lloyds Bank, to evaluate Data In Memory (DIM). It was a fun project with a wide range of workloads on multiple machines, including the then-new DB2. So we... [More]
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WLM-Managed DB2 Stored Procedure Address Spaces
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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GSE Conference 2007
Last week I attended GSE Conference for the first time in a long while. And I'm very glad I did. I very much enjoyed presenting Memory Matters in 2008 . If you've seen me present it before you might notice some minor tweakings. We learn as we go, don't we. :-) As usual the challenge is "too much material". I attended a number of other presentations. For me the highlights were: Fabio Massimo... [More]
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Hackday4 and Referer URLs
I'm going to have to stop adding "(sic)" after every use of the word "Referer". As in "Referer URL". The term itself comes from one of the standard HTTP headers. And therefore is somewhat fixed. Despite giving my "wetware spell checker" a pink fit on a frequent basis. :-) Anyhow, in this blog entry I talked about how I can - as standard - get a display of the URLs people come from to land on my... [More]
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More on Coupling Facility Async / Sync Thresholds
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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Coupling Facility Async / Sync Thresholds - They Are A'Changin'
APAR OA21635 is one of a rare breed: A change to the thresholds for z/OS's automatic CF Request conversion. (I'm told this has only happened once before.) If you recall z/OS Release 2 (in 2001) introduced a very nice function that automatically converts Coupling Facility requests from Sync to Async, based on thresholds. The purpose of this is to minimise the CPU cost for a coupled z/OS system,... [More]
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The "Gas Gauge" was indeed more than a gimmick
Back in April this blog entry incorporated a picture of the z9 HMC display that includes the "gas gauge" (or "power meter" if you prefer). This press release details a rather more serious purpose for the thing. And thanks to John McKown for pointing out the press release in IBM-MAIN Listserver.
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New Support for BatchPipes/MVS
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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DB2 Version 9 - STATIME Default Decreased to 5
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 Version 9 RLF - Not Just For SAP
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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Technorati
I'm now playing with Technorati: Technorati Profile .
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I May Not Know Who You Are But I Have Some Idea Why You're Here
I don't think you can see this information but I can see what are called "Referrer URLs" for hits on this blog. (The HTTP protocol defines a header that contains the URL you came from - when you clicked on a link.) Disregarding the several "Direct" hits - which tell me nothing - I see lots of referrer URLs with some information in them, such as: Google, Yahoo etc searches. Other blogs.... [More]
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Bye Bye Internet Explorer
Finally the last web application I use that required Internet Explorer is replaced with a Firefox-friendly version (or so we've been told). Hurrah! Except, as always, I'll believe that when I see it. (This is our Online Travel Reservations application that used an ActiveX control. Now it looks very much like an Eclipse application, except I'm certain that's just a styling thing.) And so I start to... [More]
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Is UCB Too Obscure For Wikipedia?
Well, is it? Apparently there are umpteen (count'em if you want a more precise number) :-) expansions of the acronym "UCB". But the one I care most about is Unit Control Block. (I think had been born before this meaning came into being - but I'm not sure.) :-) Actually Unit Control Block was not one of the listed meanings. So I added it yesterday - but didn't write much on it. You're probably... [More]
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Late To The Party
I'm towards the end of revamping our analysis code to support (z9) and z/OS R.8. What took us so long? :-) I'm telling you this for two reasons: So you know what there is that might slow you down. So you have some view as to whether we can competently process your data. :-) System z9 About the only change in instrumentation between z990 and z9 is the separation of specialty engines into pools. But... [More]
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Mor(e )on UIC
Thanks to the people who responded to this blog entry . And to the people who talked to me offline. The result is a slight shift in emphasis: I never did talk about UIC as the primary metric of memory constraint. If you read the referenced blog item I mentioned it as one of three, alongside paging rate and free frames. The shift is that I'm going to be more strident about UIC in future, relegating... [More]
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Memory Metrics Now That z/OS Release 8 Is Upon Us
I was asked an interesting question today by a customer - one with dozens of LPARs and therefore not much time to study each one in excruciating detail... "Given that System High UIC (hereafter referred to as 'UIC') behaves differently in z/OS R.8 how should I treat it?" I've posted on this question in MXG-L Listserver, soliciting experiences and opinions. With z/OS R.8 we replaced the "page-UIC"... [More]
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System z Technical Conference, San Antonio TX
Last week I was at the System z Tech Conference (again getting my zeds mixed up with my zees). :-) I presented 4 times, one of which was a repeat. What's especially nice is that I got 87 attendees for the "Memory Matters in 2008" presentation - spread across 2 sessions. This was despite the second time being the very last session of the conference... and 22 people still showed up to that! So... [More]
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SCRT Version 14.1.0 is Announced
I previously mentioned the change in zNALC LPAR setup... You can (with APAR OA20314) now specify LICENCE=ZNALC. The SCRT co-requisite is Version 14.1.0. By the way, from when you submit your SCRT report at the beginning of August you have to use this new version (until a new one is mandated) in order to be eligible for Sub-Capacity Pricing. There are a number of other changes, some of which are... [More]
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z/OS Performance Instrumentation Management Techniques wiki
I've just created a wiki to discuss primarily SMF. Mainly from the management perspective, rather than the contents of each individual record. This follows on from things I've mentioned in this blog before. If you'd like to contribute to it (and it is DESPERATELY in need of contributions right now) get a developerWorks screenname and send it to me here . Then I'll enable you to edit the wiki. You... [More]
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Why Mainframe Folk Should Care About Web 2.0
I presented a set of (someone else's) foils on Web 2.0 to my team meeting last week. (Interestingly, being 6 months old they were already way out of date - what with Twitter and all.) Remember I'm in a mainframe crowd of effectively "gurus". :-) So why should they be interested in new-fangled webby stuff? So I got to thinking... Dear reader, why should you care about Web 2.0? The minimal answer is... [More]
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Feedback from my UKCMG Mainframe Performance Instrumentation Birds Of A Feather
It was a very good session, even if it was attended by just a "hard core" of mainframe sites. I think everyone said at least something and several said rather more than that. Here are some things I'd like to note from it... There was a general feeling that it'd be useful to have a name for a machine that could be entered on the HMC and flow through to SMF records, particularly Type 70 (CPU). So... [More]
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Abstracts for System z Technical Conference, San Antonio, September 17-21
Here are my abstracts for the conference: Session B11: DB2 Data Sharing Performance for Beginners This presentation provides an introductory-level view of how to look at the DB2 Data Sharing performance numbersfrom both a z/OS / RMF and a DB2 perspective. Performance topics include: XCF, Coupling Facility, Data Sharing Structures, The application's perspective, and Structure Duplexing..... [More]
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And Something Else That Confuses Me
This customer is using DB2 Hiperpools, despite being on a z9 BC processor and running DB2 Version 7. What I notice from DB2 Statistics trace is that most of the Hiperpool pages are not backed by memory. In other words they've ceased to exist. This despite there being plenty of memory in the LPAR. One thing that's also significant is that there are very few reads back from the Hiperpools. It's... [More]
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It Doesn't Take Much To Confuse Me
... with a Performance Consultant? :-) Seriously, here's something that made me go "hmm"... I started looking at the latest set of data from a customer... Their biggest-CPU WLM workload is called "BATCH" when they told me they were a CICS shop - and that CICS was their main CPU consumer during the day. But it turns out that the biggest service class within that workload contains exclusively CICS... [More]
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IMS Version 10 Memory Enhancements
Regular readers would know I'm working on my "Memory Matters in 2008" presentation, which is a re-spin of the '07 Version. One of the things I talk about is IMS. Thanks to my team mate Andy Wilkinson for this list of IMS Version 10 enhancements, all of which are virtual storage usage improvements. Here are the more important items: OTMA message flood protection (prevents LSQA filling). This is... [More]
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UK GSE Conference 30-31 October - Memory Matters in 2008
One of the problems with having a presentation with a topical title is that you keep having to update the darned thing. :-) "Memory Matters in 2007" is a case in point. It's morphed over the years from two presentations: "Central Storage Performance" and "Expanded Storage Performance" (the latter of which eventually became obsolete) to a presentation that covered OS/390 real memory, DFSORT and DB2... [More]
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Humble Pie Regarding DFSORT and SMF
(Also posted to MXG-L Listserver (MXG-L@PEACH.EASE.LSOFT.COM) which I highly recommend as a place where mainframe performance people hang out.) I must confess I feel slightly foolish about this... :-) After having asked for input into my UKCMG BOF one of the themes that came out was better ways of doing what IFASMFDP does. (I already have this on my agenda - as you'll know if you follow my blog.)... [More]
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Madness At Passport Control
I happened to be travelling through Heathrow Terminal 2 yesterday and the day before. Two incidents that made me scratch my head, both related to Passport Control... On the way out there are two Passport Control desks, just past Security. They are set a few feet apart and people can go either side of either of them. For once there was someone on duty, but only one officer. At the head of the queue... [More]
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Birds Of A Feather Session at UKCMG Conference, June 25-27
As you probably know this year's UKCMG conferenece in June 25-27, Whittlebury Hall, Northants. I noticed when I read the agenda yesterday 2 things: Glenn Anderson's being worked awfully hard . He's a great speaker so do make the effort to attend his sessions. There's a BOF session on each evening - just before the entertainment. So I rang Laura at UKCMG up and offered to run a BOF. I got a "that's... [More]
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XCF Performance WSC White Paper
I'm reminded of this white paper on XCF Performance from Joan Kelley and Kathy Walsh. It's a good read and has been recently updated. It does also remind me that there are "D XCF" subcommands that give information that isn't in the RMF data (SMF 74 Subtype 2). We process these records in our consulting and I'm getting considerably more familiar the underlying data. (I also had a situation recently... [More]
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Big Green
Now I know why, as previously reported here, there's a new power meter on the HMC. See this blog entry and the links from it for more details of the "Big Green" energy efficiency initiative. And this goes way beyond the "packets of grass seed" campaign of last year - which highlighted the already available energy-saving characteristics of the mainframe.
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As Seen on Nürnberg U-Bahn
Here's a nice BSOD from a ticket machine on the Nürnberg U-Bahn. :-)
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When Good Work Doesn't Go To zIIP / zAAP Heaven
Whenever I talk about zIIPs and zAAPs I'm reminded of Zip Zap miniature radio-controlled cars . But (to get past the censors I have to say) zIIPs and zAAPs are not toys. Here's an extract from a post on MXG-L that Bernie Pierce made. (I reproduce it with his kind permission.) If there is contention for the local lock, the cross memory local lock, the CMS lock or any other suspend lock, units of... [More]
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DB2 Data Sharing Performance and Coupling Facility Enhancements for DB2 Version 8
Occasioned by some recent enhancements to MXG I thought it high time I talked about a couple of Coupling Facility commands that DB2 Version 8 can take advantage of: (And thanks to Barry Merrill for the MXG information and the sample data I'm using here.) MXG Version 25.04, May 7, 2007 provides support for these enhancements. Coupling Facility Level (CFLEVEL) 13 introduced the WARM and RFCOM... [More]
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Serious Work of Drinking in München
Thanks to Margaret Koppes of the European Patent Office for this picture of me and Glenn Anderson hard at work at the "main tent session" :-) in München:
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UKCMG Conference, June 25-27, Whittlebury Hall, Northants
I've just submitted my three presentations for this great conference: Much Ado About CPU Memory Matters in 2007 DB2 Data Sharing Performance For Beginners UKCMG is - for me - a great chance to catch up with customers, vendors and others in the industry. Its prime focus is Performance - multiplatform in fact - but we always have a thumpingly good showing of mainframe and DB2 topics. And this year... [More]
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Gameframes
Hmmm: IBM press release on the gameframe . I'd like to see a lot more detail on this before I go "whoopie!" but it does sound like an intriguing idea. It would be the first "specialty" engine to actually feature different hardware. Reminds of me of the 3090 Vector Facility but it's really nothing like it. And at this stage there's nothing about what will actually be shipped. Still, I'm happy to... [More]
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What I Learned From My Conference Evaluations
I was pleasantly surprised to see my conference evaluations so soon - given the European System z Technical Conference was only last week. Very professional to have the feedback straight away. All the people who filled in the evaluation forms - and that exceeded 50% of the attendees in every session - were very kind, I feel. Here's what I learned: I still talk too fast, and still have highly... [More]
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Lest We Forget - The legacy of Guernica
Here's a salutary item from the BBC: The legacy of Guernica .
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European System z Technical Conference - End of Day 5
Marna Walle: Recent Installation Enhancements and Directions Marna gave a very good presentation, covering a wide range of topics in this area. Here are some highlights - at least from MY perspective: In z/OS R.7: z/OS R.7 UNIX introduced Dynamic Service Activation for SELECTED corrective PTFs. Only works for PTFs marked as "for dynamic activation" with ++HOLD REASON(DYNACT). Not all PTFs are... [More]
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European System z Technical Conference - End of Day 4
Parwez Hamid: System z9 BC GA2 and System z9 EC GA3 Update Available from 11 May, Driver Level 67 provides the BC GA2 / EC GA3 enhancements. The current one is 63. Parwez set the expectation the upgrade can be done non-disruptively if you plan carefully. Common to BC and EC machines: LPAR Group Capacity Limit. Group of LPARs on one footprint need not be in the same parallel sysplex. Requires z/OS... [More]
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European System z Technical Conference - End of Day 3
Me: Memory Matters in 2007 I was pleased that about 60 people attended this presentation. Connie Beuselinck: System z9 OSA-Express2 Update and Performance Benchmarks Network Traffic Analyzer was announced today for QDIO problem determination. It's exclusive to z9 and OSA-Express2. QDIO Diagnostic Synchronisation (also announced today) allows z/OS to signal to OSA-Express2 to synchronise software... [More]
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SMF Dump Program - IFASMFDP
I just started talking to the original developer of the IFASMFDP SMF Dump Program about adding more record selection sophistication to it. I can promise absolutely nothing but are there any requirements any of you have for the SMF Dump Program?
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European System z Technical Conference - End of Day 2
Paul Rogers: z/OS Releases 8, 9 and Beyond This is very much an overview presentation. Other sessions go into more detail. Paul provided a salutary reminder that z/OS Release 6 goes out of service at the end of September. We're now supporting only the current release and the 2 previous ones. APAR OA20314 (in support of zNALC) allows you to IPL with LICENSE=ZNALC rather than hardcoding the LPAR's... [More]
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System z Tech Conference - End of Day 1
It's been really nice meeting with so many acquaintances. The highlight of Day 1 was undoubtedly Pat Artis presenting on HyperPAVs. As I have a couple of foils on HyperPAVs from the DB2 perspective on Thursday it's going to be nice not to have to explain them in too much detail - as Pat did such a great job.(The Thursday session is on I/O and DB2 Versions 8 and 9, a much wider ranging version of... [More]
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European System z Technical Conference Begins
The agenda this time is chock full of great sessions. I've "marked my card" for every single session . Bob Hoey - marketing guy though he is - is giving a keynote speech that fills one with a lot of hope for the mainframe. (Bob, if you know nothing else about him, participated in the infamous "IBM Mainframe Marketing" videos that appeared on You-Tube a few months ago.) So I'm really looking... [More]
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IBM System z Technical Conference 2007
This year's IBM System z Technical Conference is 16-20 April in Munich. Now I've got my three presentations together I can relax and have just perused the agenda: There are some very good sessions and some excellent speakers. My sessions are: Much Ado About CPU I've worked pretty hard to move the z9 stuff into the main flow and also added stuff on z/OS R.8 and a tiny bit on R.9. I think it's... [More]
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How the WebOS Evolves?
Here's a nice picture from the Minding the Planet blog :
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An Excellent Paper on Uniprocessor Performance Management
My good friend Linda August (of the IBM Washington Systems Center and previously of the global Performance Management team I was a member of) has written a very good paper (and an accompanying presentation she gave at SHARE in February). The theme is highly topical: The management of uniprocessor LPARs. Topical because of the increased uniprocessor speed of the z990 and particularly the z9... [More]
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John Backus RIP
I guess I must be part of the "ungrateful peasant" generation of computer geeks... I never really liked FORTRAN. And now John Backus who led the team that developed it is dead . For me the elegance of other languages biased my view - but that's to miss the point: FORTRAN preceded them. And with all such pioneers elegance of form is often lacking. I did have some practical acquaintance with... [More]
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Scratch - A Great Way To Teach Children Programming
Some time ago a colleague pointed Scratch out to me. It's a programming environment for children. When I was a kid I kind of learnt programming from the Elsevier Monographs my Dad had on his bookshelf. He (who's probably going to read this) gave them to me for safekeeping some time ago. So I count HIM as my first bad influence. :-) But he did insist on STRUCTURED programming, so maybe he's a GOOD... [More]
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Not Just People Twittering - Vehicles As Well
Here's an interesting BBC News Article: Vehicle warning system trialled . So let me see now, when we said the fridge would talk to the microwave - as everything would have an IP address - did we really envisage that they would Twitter? :-) Can you imagine "The Bloggings of an uncleaned fridge?" :-) And can you imagine what'd happen if my fridge started Twittering and next door's microwave yakked... [More]
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Twittering and Blogging
Here's a useful contribution to the debate about Twitter: From a friend's blog . There's much mileage in the comments - which is where the action really hots up. :-) Actually her blog is in general a good read - but maybe I'm biased as she's a friend of mine. She's a Web 2.0 enthusiast with a great line in photos and original art. (If you want a business justification for reading her blog she's a... [More]
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DB2 9 Memory Requirements
Twice the "128GB" question has come up in newsgroups (the latest in DB2-L). This sort of thing freaks people out - so let me tell you what I know of the matter... I was fortunate to attend the T3 for DB2 9 in February. This question came up in the context of some changes to DDF : In Version 8 communication between DDF's DIST address space and the DBM1 address space was via CSA (actually ECSA so... [More]
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Famous Names on Twitter - And Is It Going To Change The Face Of Politics?
On Twitter I once followed Steve Wozniak - but it turned out not to be him. :-( Now I'm following John Edwards (and it really does appear to be him). See his Twitter page . I say "it does appear to be him" because the twitterings seem to support that conclusion, plus there is a photograph of him (not that that's strong evidence). (The ones for the supposed Steve Wozniak never gave credence - it... [More]
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3G Card and Sufficient Rurality
I'm writing this in the back of a taxi - on my way to Heathrow. (A 3G card for my Thinkpad was waiting for me when I got home yesterday.) My conclusion is that we live somewhere "sufficiently rural" as I've lost signal once . (That was between us and Henley.) Any more than that and I'd think we lived in the sticks. As it is to actually lose the signal at all is a reassurance that we don't live... [More]
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Twitter - twittering on? Or real insight
Whichever it is, here's my Twitter badge. Feel free to befriend. :-) follow martinpacker at http://twitter.com
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Wikipedia
Whatever one's feelings about the definitiveness of Wikipedia a lot of people find themselves there, looking for information. Having twice anonymously edited articles - in one case to correct an error, in the other to add a minor snippet - I finally succumbed to the urge to get an ID. So my efforts aren't quite so anonymous - and are therefore a bit more accountable. I'm not going to go overboard... [More]
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DB2 9 and End Of Service For DB2 Version 7
Willie Favero is also blogging about this - and I stole the link from him... Here's the End of Service announcement for DB2 Version 7 . It goes out of service on June 30, 2008. I've just sat through four days of the T3 class for DB2 9 for z/OS - in Silicon Valley Lab. My "take home" message is that there's lots of stuff in all the usual areas. It's a truly exciting release. Note: It's "DB2 9" and... [More]
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z/OS Release 9 is Previewed
See the z/OS Release 9 preview statement if you're interested in z/OS. There are lots of interesting Performance items previewed, as well as other line items. It's expected to become available in September 2007, following the current pattern of a new release each year (preview in the so-called Spring :-)and release in the Autumn) so expect lots more information on it later this year. I do wonder... [More]
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z/OS Release 8 Real Storage Changes
I suggested (in z/OS Release 8 Real Storage Manager SMF Record Changes ) that I might talk about the changes to RSM in z/OS Release 8. As the release has been out now for about 4 months some of you might actually be on the brink of putting it into production. :-) Seriously, you probably are planning for the day when someone cuts over to Release 8. RSM was largely rewritten - for a very good... [More]
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Going The Distance
I presented to the Large Systems GSE meeting in Dudley on Wednesday on "DB2 Data Sharing Performance For Beginners" and an interesting question came up... "At what distance does performance begin to suffer when moving machines in a parallel sysplex apart?" As it happens I am dealing with exactly that question in a customer right now. It seems it's a popular thing to attempt. (I know: One user... [More]
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z/OS Release 8 CPU SMF Record Changes
I've just been looking at some fascinating SMF 70 records. They come from a System z9 EC S54 machine and the LPAR they're from is running z/OS Release 8. I say "fascinating" because: I've not seen an S54's data before. (This is the largest z9 machine - with all 4 processor books fully populated with engines.) There are changes that I asked RMF (and PR/SM) Development to add into Release 8 that I'm... [More]
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z/OS Release 8 Real Storage Manager SMF Record Changes
In z/OS Release 8 Real Storage Manager (RSM) implemented brand new algorithms. One of the more significant changes was the adoption of a "new style" UIC value. This behaves much more like the old Expanded Storage Migration Age. Accordingly the old UIC value (SMF71ACA) isn't really appropriate to use anymore. Or at least it won't behave the way it used to. And before I go any further the SMF Type... [More]
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