Category Archives: Uncategorized

(Originally posted 2012-12-04.) I’ve talked about BPXWUNIX before but here’s a nice use case: Filtering REXX query results. When I get your performance data I have code that stores it in a database which I query with (essentially) REXX. The predicate syntax is very simplistic so I’d like to do better. I can’t replace theContinue reading “Filtering REXX Query Results With BPXWUNIX”

(Originally posted 2012-12-03.) Just a brief follow on to Bad Data And The Subjunctive Mood: Here’s a podcast I like to listen to while running. (Music and podcasts are about the only thing that keep me running, that and the success at my modest goals.) BBC Radio 4 has a very nice programme More OrContinue reading “A Nice Data Provenance Related Podcast”

(Originally posted 2012-12-02.) Or should that be “Subjective Data And The Bad Mood”? 🙂 A good friend of mine says that when dispensing advice one shouldn’t use “may” or “might”, but that one should be more definite. I’ve probably said this before: When I say or write “may” or “might” I’m deploying the subjunctive moodContinue reading “Bad Data And The Subjunctive Mood”

(Originally posted 2012-11-24.) I seem to be obsessed with finding patterns in data, don’t I? And, to my mind, I’m insufficiently obsessed to bring it all to a thunderous conclusion. Pardon the self-flagellation 🙂 here: This stuff is technically difficult. But just yesterday I think I made a breakthrough. I think it’s worth sharing itContinue reading “Towards A Pattern Explorer – Jobname Analysis”

(Originally posted 2012-11-20.) Once in a while there comes along a simple coding enhancement that really kicks the story forwards. This post is about just such a simple thing, as I think customer Performance people would benefit from it. Consider the following perfectly ordinary graph heading (and ignore the grottiness of the font if youContinue reading “A Simple Graphing Enhancement Makes All The Difference”

(Originally posted 2012-11-19.) With apologies to cat keepers everywhere (of whom I’m one). 🙂 Most of my reporting – when not graphical using GDDM – is created using Bookmaster. This looks in many ways like HTML and is another declarative markup language for text. It used to be what most IBM publications (including Redbooks) areContinue reading “Many Ways To Skin A Cat – Modernising Bookmaster / Script”

(Originally posted 2012-11-17.) About a year ago I posted: A Small Step For RMF, A Giant Leap For Self-Documenting Systems. A year on I’ve encountered some customer data that’s made me go "huh?", related to this. In the referenced post I mentioned R744FLPN, the Coupling Facility’s LPAR Number. For the first time I’ve seen dataContinue reading “Self-Documenting Systems (Actually Coupling Facilities) – One Year On”

(Originally posted 2012-10-13.) Hackday X was good clean fun yesterday – though I think it deserves more than one kiss. 🙂 Seriously, for once I think I have a hack that actually worked – at least up to a point. I called my entry “z/OS Batch Analytics Baby Steps” and I think that’s about right.Continue reading “Hackday X – Batch Analytics Baby Steps”

(Originally posted 2012-10-10.) Round about now you’d be expecting posts to be geared towards the recent zEC12 announcement, or perhaps CICS TS 5.1 or the DB2 11 Preview, or IDAA V3. So what this post is about will probably have slipped by unnoticed. After all you don’t spend all your time looking for obscure NewContinue reading “New CPU Information In SMF Type 30 Records”

(Originally posted 2012-10-04.) I don't know how many of you will've spotted this but there was a nice instrumentation enhancement in the recent System zEC12 announcement. It comes with the RMF support for CFLEVEL 18 (OA37826 and provides much more detail on paths to Coupling Facilities (CFs). Previously RMF reported channel path acronyms – oneContinue reading “System zEC12 CFLEVEL 18 RMF Instrumentation Improvements”