Author Archives: Martin Packer

(Originally posted 2014-11-09.) At UK GSE Annual Conference I presented on DB2 and Workload Manager. It occurred to me that one of the slides was a good basis for a blog post, posing the question “what’s the point of WLM?” And this was the slide, with me “for scale purposes”. 🙂 (Thanks to Karen WilkinsContinue reading “What’s The Point Of WLM?”

(Originally posted 2014-11-02.) If you come to my blog only for Performance- or SMF-related topics you’re going to be disappointed in this post. But if, like me, you’re interested in storytelling and web-related technologies then read on. This post is about HTML5 Canvas – a technology I really like. Some Of Why I Care AboutContinue reading “Not So Much Renaissance Man More Tool-Using Ape :-)”

(Originally posted 2014-10-12.) … and other address spaces, too. 🙂 In Once Upon A Restart I talked about how to detect IPLs and restarts of CICS regions and MQ subsystems (and other long-running address spaces) – from SMF Type 30 Interval records. It’s easy to see starts but what about stops?[1] It turns out youContinue reading “The End Is Nigh For CICS”

(Originally posted 2014-09-28.) As you’ve probably gathered I like to get nosy about how customers run systems. This is probably best and most recently exemplified by this blog post: Once Upon A Restart So this post is about another piece of curiosity: What spikes can tell us about how people run systems. In a wayContinue reading “Curiouser And Curiouser, Spike”

(Originally posted 2014-09-21.) Back in 2010 I wrote about a graph I’d developed for understanding how a Service Class Period’s velocity behaves. That post is here: WLM Velocity – “Rhetorical Devices Are Us”. At the time I was concerned not to show up the customer by displaying the graph. I think that was the rightContinue reading “WLM Velocity – Another Fine Rhetorical Device I’ve Gotten Myself Into”

(Originally posted 2014-09-08.) Some technologies show up “in the field” very soon after they’re announced and shipped. Others take a little longer. Back in 2009[1] I blogged about one technology – DFSORT JOINKEYS. For this post to make much sense you’ll probably want to read that post first. Here it is: DFSORT Does JOIN. DaveContinue reading “DFSORT JOINKEYS Instrumentation – A Practical Example”

(Originally posted 2014-08-18.) I’m pleased to be presenting three sessions at UK GSE Annual Conference, Tuesday 4th and Wednesday 5th November in Whittlebury Hall. Two are on the zCMPA (Performance and Capacity or “UKCMG”) track: Life and Times of an Address Space (Tuesday) zIIP Capacity Planning (Wednesday) I’ve written about these extensively. Obviously they’re evolvedContinue reading “Workload Manager And DB2 Presentation Abstract”

(Originally posted 2014-06-03.) Sitting in Dave Gorman’s Broker V9 presentation in Budapest it struck me it would be a useful exercise to apply the “Systems Investigation” techniques I write about to Broker running on z/OS. So let’s see how far we can get with SMF 30 Interval records, in the vein of Life And TimesContinue reading “Broker And SMF 30”

(Originally posted 2014-05-21.) In Budapest at the European System z Technical University I presented three topics: zIIP Capacity Planning (twice) Life And Times Of An Address Space Parallel Batch Performance Considerations The links take you to the Slideshare uploads of these presentations. The first two of these are updated for this conference and I’ve overwrittenContinue reading “System z Technical University, Budapest 12-16 May 2014, Slides”

(Originally posted 2014-05-18.) “Mobile” appears to be “flavour of the month” right now, and this week at System z Technical University it has certainly been a topic in evidence, whether it’s discussions in the breaks, sessions on software pricing, or sessions on Mobile-enabling technology. I don’t intend in this post to discuss any of these.Continue reading “And Just Complain”