Category Archives: Uncategorized

(Originally posted 2008-07-31.) As I mentioned in this blog post DFSORT just shipped a new FINDREP function to do “find and replace”. I mentioned an example of where I might use it to replace SMFIDs in SMF records. That example generally works well. But suppose (say, for SMF 42-6 Data Set Performance records) I wantContinue reading “Replace String A With String B But Not If It’s Part Of String A1”

(Originally posted 2008-07-29.) Yesterday DFSORT announced a new set of functions – as PTF UK90013. The documentation for it can be found here. Every year or so there’s a new set of DFSORT functions – and generally they’re “out of cycle” with z/OS releases – although they are incorporated into subsequent releases of z/OS. ThisContinue reading “New DFSORT Functions”

(Originally posted 2008-07-11.) A couple of days ago I attended the pilot of a “Web 2.0 and System z” workshop in the Boeblingen lab. I’m pleased to say the room was full – both with IBMers and non-IBMers. And I think my presentation – which was basically a rant about Web 2.0 Behaviours and whyContinue reading “Web 2.0 and System z Pilot Workshop – And Other Conversations”

(Originally posted 2008-07-11.) In the same meeting with RMF Development as ERBSCAN / ERBSHOW was discussed we talked about Parallel Sysplex instrumentation. (Both XCF and Coupling Facility aspects.) One thing I hadn’t noticed is the appearance of Subchannel Busy Percentage as a number in the following three places: In Monitor III In the Spreadsheet ReporterContinue reading “Coupling Facility Subchannel Busy in RMF”

(Originally posted 2008-07-11.) I mentioned ERBSCAN and ERBSHOW in this post from January. This is a handy pair of tools for displaying SMF records – most notably the ones produced by RMF. For the uninitiated you type ERBSCAN in ISPF 3.4 against an SMF data set and it pops up a list of SMF records.Continue reading “ERBSCAN / ERBSHOW – More Good News”

(Originally posted 2008-06-25.) Many of you will have, by now, installed the Adobe AIR runtime. Most probably it will be to run something like Twhirl. At this point many of you will be asking “what’s Twhirl?” If I said it was a nice desktop application that makes using Twitter so much easier I hope youContinue reading “First Impressions Of Programming With Adobe AIR”

(Originally posted 2008-06-21.) The same Kevin Keller I mentioned in this blog post is running a one day pilot of a “Web 2.0 and System z” workshop on July 8th, in IBM Böblingen. It’s designed for customers, though some of the audience will undoubtedly be IBMers. I’ve looked at the agenda and, while I’m onContinue reading “Web 2.0 and System z Pilot Workshop”

(Originally posted 2008-06-20.) Take a look at my German colleague Kevin Keller’s new blog in Web 2.0 and z/OS. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at what runs on z/OS that the rest of the world would regard as modern. 🙂 I say “modern” rather than “Web 2.0” because I feel the latter term isContinue reading “Kevin Keller’s Web 2.0 and z/OS Blog”

(Originally posted 2008-06-19.) Hats off to Jonathan Feinberg (who’s created a number of neat sites inside IBM) for creating Wordle. The above is a nice depiction of the keywords for my blog. Click on it for a bigger version. Go to here to make your own from any sets of text you like.

(Originally posted 2008-06-16.) I’m not sure if anyone’s done this before. Certainly I’ve not seen any results… We’re beginning to write up some tests the “A Team” (Alain and Pierre) ran before their return to France. Which provides me with some test data. Fortunately I had a stab at mapping the new fields this dataContinue reading “Coupling Facility Structure CPU – An Interesting Test”