Author Archives: Martin Packer

(Originally posted 2018-09-09.) I have another flight where my Inbox is surprisingly close to empty so I’m writing about a nice iOS app that should be of interest to both mainframers and non-mainframers. This app is Rescript by Matteo Villa and it is a javascript programming environment for iPad and iPhone. It, most particularly, allowsContinue reading “Appening 6 – Rescript NodeJS Environment”

(Originally posted 2018-07-28.) It’s the Time Of The Season1 for thinking about Day One support. Not for z/OS, or DB2, or CICS, or anything mainframe-related. But for iOS, MacOS and their kin. Before you switch off – if you’re an Android user2 – you can consider the Apple bit an analogue. This post will beContinue reading “Day One Support; Who Needs It?”

(Originally posted 2018-07-26.) “Mum!” came the cry in the middle of the night. You can imagine how well that was received.1 “There’s a frog in the bathroom!” shouted my daughter. Indignant or horrified, you decide. 🙂 So, a number of thoughts occurred: It can’t do us any harm; It’s tiny and probably more scared ofContinue reading “Ethel The Frog And Other Animals”

(Originally posted 2018-07-09.) Writing about writing; How meta is that? 🙂 It’s been 4 years since I wrote Appening 3 – Editorial on iOS. (In the same year I went on to write Appening 4 – SwiftKey on iOS. So here we are with another thrilling “Appening” episode.) Seriously, it’s been a while since IContinue reading “Appening 5 – Drafts On iOS”

(Originally posted 2018-07-07.) Sometimes I can plan ahead, designing analysis code for an upcoming feature of e.g. z/OS. Often, however, a condition falls into my lap – without my having thought about it first. This is about the latter. It’s about CICS’ support of Java Liberty Profile – or “Lib Profile” for short. I wantContinue reading “CICS Takes The Liberty”

(Originally posted 2018-06-25.) This post follows on from something I mentioned in When Reality Bytes. Some things I get to immediately; Others take a little time. This is one of the latter. A more systematic, better, way for classifying work as Mobile was introduced with APARs OA47072 for WLM and OA48466 for RMF in DecemberContinue reading “More Mobile”

(Originally posted 2018-05-29.) In a sense this post follows on from I Must Be Mad – where I talked about some of the subtleties of processing SMF. In another sense it’s writing down in public a briefing I want to give one of my mentees.1 She’s about to prototype some code to go against aContinue reading “Rexx’Em”

(Originally posted 2018-05-27.) I must be mad to do what I do… 🙂 Specifically, I’m talking about maintaining code to process SMF records, rather than relying on somebody else to do it. Recently I sat down with someone who is getting started with processing SMF. In fact they’re building sample reporting to go against aContinue reading “I Must Be Mad”

(Originally posted 2018-05-12.) In my “How To Be A Better Performance Specialist” presentation I have a bullet point that says ‘there’s no value in being “The Man Who Knew Too Little”’. Well, it astonishes me how often I am the man who knew too little. 🙂 I guess we keep on learning OR ELSE.1 InContinue reading “When Reality Bytes”

(Originally posted 2018-04-21.) Maybe it’s because I know nothing about DB2 buffer pools that I’ve never written about them.1 Actually, that wouldn’t be true. I would say I know a fair amount about DB2, but I’ve taken a bit of a step back from it – as we have a DB2 Performance specialist in theContinue reading “Maybe It’s Because…”