Category Archives: Uncategorized

(Originally posted 2013-10-18.) This post is yet another spin off from the residency I’m on in Poughkeepsie. I mentioned in We Have Residents! I might do something with JSON (Javascript Object Notation) and indeed I have. But why would a residency on Batch Performance concern itself with JSON (and indeed XML, which I’ve also writtenContinue reading “Creating JSON with DFSORT”

(Originally posted 2013-10-14.) While working through a scenario in our residency it became (briefly) important to be able to preserve sort order on a field. But this field wasn’t sorted in any recognisable way. So the records couldn’t be sorted alphabetically or numerically. In fact they had to be sorted so that this field wasContinue reading “Unusual Sort Fields”

(Originally posted 2013-10-12.) In What I’m Looking Forward To In z/OS 2.1 I mentioned processing VBS (Variable Blocked Spanned) data with REXX. This post describes what I learnt when I used it on our residency z/OS 2.1 system. The most widely-known VBS data is SMF, though the Tivoli Workload Scheduler (TWS) Audit Log is alsoContinue reading “Processing VBS Data With REXX”

(Originally posted 2013-09-16.) If you’re looking for a considered opinion you came to the wrong place. 🙂 Or so anyone reading Down In The Dumps? shortly after reading Enigma And Variations Of A Memory Kind might conclude. It’s possibly a fair cop, possibly not, but it got me thinking… In reality life is a sequenceContinue reading “My Considered Opinion?”

(Originally posted 2013-09-14.) That’s such a horrible pun I must’ve used it before. If so sorry (but not very). 🙂 This post follows on from Enigma And Variations Of A Memory Kind in a way. In that post I mentioned DUMPSRV, in almost a throwaway fashion: I happened to notice the memory usage in SMFContinue reading “Down In The Dumps?”

(Originally posted 2013-09-11.) As I mentioned in We Have Residents! we'll be working with a z/OS 2.1 system in October. In fact I've already logged on to it. I might even get to play with it before the residency starts, depending on current workload – but the priority is to hit the ground running byContinue reading “What I’m Looking Forward To In z/OS 2.1”

(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”