Category Archives: Uncategorized

(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…”

(Originally posted 2018-04-15.) This week I went from a very fuzzy “I’ve a sneaking suspicion this WLM policy doesn’t make sense” to a (clear as mud)1 🙂 “it makes perfect sense” – so I suppose it’s been a good week. 🙂 Something Clever Our Reporting Does I keep banging on about2 the value of SMFContinue reading “Just Because…”

(Originally posted 2018-03-05.) ”… And then two come along at once.” 🙂 Unlike Billboards or London Buses, only two here folks. 🙂 So, we had ideas (and somehow time) to record two episodes almost back to back. So we did. But we have no chance of recording together for a while, sadly. Which is aContinue reading “Mainframe Performance Topics Podcast Episode 18 “What We Won’t Have In Common Anymore””

(Originally posted 2018-03-01.) This episode really has been a long time coming. If I reflect on why, there are two things… The main one is our schedules. Marna and I, as you’ll see, have been all over the place. The minor one is that – until about a month ago – I wasn’t on aContinue reading “Mainframe Performance Topics Podcast Episode 17 “Two Good, Four Better?””

(Originally posted 2018-02-24.) I’ve used a title like this before. It was in 2011 in What’s In A Name?1. But this post bears only a slightly resemblance to that one. This post is about gleaning information from names, specifically data set names. Consider this one… PR04.XYZ892.XYZ893.D171130.T1700 So what are we to make of this dataContinue reading “What’s In A Name? – Revisited”

(Originally posted 2018-01-30.) I was fortunate enough to spend last week in IBM’s Silicon Valley Lab (SVL), both in formal sessions and talking to developers. One topic – which isn’t really all that new – is DB2’s REST support, which is pretty comprehensive and good. The basic idea with this support is you can callContinue reading “REST, JSON, And DB2 – Some Initial Thoughts”