Author Archives: Martin Packer

(Originally posted 2013-09-07.) This post, unlike the previous one, is “on topic” for a Mainframe Performance Topics blog. I hope nobody’s relying on that. In fact I joke about renaming blog this to “Mainframe, Performance, Topics” 🙂 the next time I ask for the header to be updated. In fact I just might. I recentlyContinue reading “Enigma And Variations Of A Memory Kind”

(Originally posted 2013-09-06.) This post is in response to Kelly's post "Hashtags – love 'em or hate 'em? ". My true response is "well, neither really." 🙂 A slightly more considered response would be to note that the utility of hashtags has decreased markedly over time: In the beginning there was e.g. Twitter without anyContinue reading “Tagging Up Stuff”

(Originally posted 2013-08-02.) In my experience Coupling Facility Duplexing configuration and performance is something that tends to get neglected – once the initial configuration decisions have been made. After all it’s rare that customers rework their Duplexing design. Over the past few weeks I’ve been comprehensively reworking my Coupling Facility tabular reporting, as I recentlyContinue reading “Coupling Facility Duplexing Reporting Warm-Over”

(Originally posted 2013-07-30.) Recently I wrote up some initial results of using OA37826 data in Coupling Facility Topology Information – A Continuing Journey . That post in turn followed on from System zEC12 CFLEVEL 18 RMF Instrumentation Improvements . Since then an interesting thing happened – and sooner than I thought it would: I gotContinue reading “The Missing Link?”

(Originally posted 2013-07-18.) Back in May I wrote about a new batch residency planned for this October and invited good people to apply to join the team. It’s been very pleasing how many people applied to be residents and the high quality of the entrants: It was genuinely difficult to pick the eventual team. WeContinue reading “We Have Residents!”

(Originally posted 2013-07-16.) You could consider this another in the Small Programming Enhancement (SPE) 🙂 series. You’ll probably also notice I’ve been doing quite a lot of REXX programming recently. Anyway, here’s a tip for refactoring code I like. Suppose you have a line of code: norm_squared=(i-j)*(i-j) that you want to turn into a function.Continue reading “Refactoring REXX – Temporarily Inlined Functions”

(Originally posted 2013-07-15.) In REXX sorting is a fraught exercise – and you tend to have to resort to other programs to do it: DFSORT for the “heavy lifting” UNIX Sort but you might decide your sort is low volume enough to do in REXX. The trouble is it’s difficult to write a routine thatContinue reading “Sorting In REXX Made Easy”

(Originally posted 2013-07-14.) A couple of days ago I had a need to take a REXX string comprising space-separated numbers and find their minimum and maximum values. Here’s the technique I used. (When I say “space-separated” there can be one or more spaces between the numbers, but there has to be at least one.) TheContinue reading “Min And Max Of Tokens In A String”

(Originally posted 2013-07-07.) 9 months on from this post and I finally get some time to enhance my Coupling Facility reporting. If you recall I mentioned OA37826, which provides new SMF 74 Subtype 4 data and fields in the RMF Coupling Facility Activity report – in support of enhancements in CFLEVEL 18.[1] I also mentionedContinue reading “Coupling Facility Topology Information – A Continuing Journey”

(Originally posted 2013-06-30.) I’ll admit it: I have a dirty little secret. 🙂 All I can say is it was in my youth – and I didn’t know any better. 🙂 And folks I’m exclusively revealing my secret here in this blog… 🙂 I learned to program in BASIC. 🙂 Actually the “I didn’t knowContinue reading “Why Do I Program In ?”