Author Archives: Martin Packer

(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 ?”

(Originally posted 2013-06-24.) I’ve been fortunate enough to speak at two conferences in the past month: UKCMG Annual Conference – in London in May System z Technical University – just outside Munich in June I presented three different sets of material, with very little overlap: Time For Dime Life And Times Of An Address SpaceContinue reading “Recent Conference Presentations”

(Originally posted 2013-06-07.) I like REXX but sometimes it leaves a little to be desired. This post is about a technique for dealing with some of the issues. I present it in the hope some of you will find it worth building on, or using directly. Note: I’m talking about Classic REXX and not OpenContinue reading “Dragging REXX Into The 21st Century?”

(Originally posted 2013-06-01.) Over the years I’ve written emails with data collection requirements dozens of times, with varying degrees of clarity. It would be better, wouldn’t it, to write it once. I don’t think I can get out of the business of writing such emails entirely but here’s a goodly chunk of it. Another thingContinue reading “Data Collection Requirements”