1. Cheryl Watson’s TUNING Letter 2005 No. 1
2. TUNING Letter CD-ROM
3. Security Flaw in Google Desktop Search Tool
4. Adobe Reader 7.0 is Available
5. New Open Source Journal
6. CICS Batch Application Control
7. SHARE Celebrates 50th Birthday
1. Cheryl Watson’s TUNING Letter 2005 No. 1
The forty-nine page 2005 No. 1 TUNING Letter was emailed to electronic subscribers last Friday (11Feb2005). The following is a summary of just some of the contents of this latest TUNING Letter:
Tuning the JES2 Checkpoint
If you are a JES2 user, then one of the most critical data sets that you have is the JES2 checkpoint data set. This is particularly true when using a Multi-Access SPOOL (MAS) configuration (multiple images sharing the same JES2 resources). Because each participating MAS image must regularly gain exclusive access to the checkpoint data set, monitoring the performance of this data set is critical. There are several configuration options within JES2 that allow you to control how often access will occur, and how often the data set will be held. In our Focus article about Tuning the JES2 Checkpoint (see page 15) we share information about some tools that will help you do this. One of these tools is free, and the other is part of a product that you probably already have. Either of these tools should help you make some intelligent decisions about tuning this important data set.
The Dinosaur Myth
At one time or another you’ve probably been put in the uncomfortable position of having to justify the cost of applications on the z/OS platform. We all know that many of the low-cost claims for other platforms tend to evaporate when all the costs have been considered. There is an interesting paper called “The Dinosaur Myth” that may help you create more accurate cost estimates for z/OS applications. This paper was recently updated by the original author (see page 11).
SMTP on z/OS
More users are implementing SMTP on z/OS so that they can send email from their z/OS systems. But some users have found that configuring SMTP for z/OS is a complex and prolonged experience. On page 25 we share a “how to do it” checklist that a user created when he went through this exercise.
Elsewhere In This Issue
In our Reader Feedback section, starting on page 30, we include comments received from our readers about PAV performance, obsolete VSAM data set attributes, workload manager, system address spaces and improving IPL speed. Our readers are always willing to provide updates or clarifications to some of the items we publish, and we like to pass those along when we think they are helpful.
December is always a busy month for us, so we didn’t make it to the CMG National meeting last year. But Rich Olcott was kind enough to send along his observations, which we have included in a CMG Trip Report on page 39. We include his notes from a user’s WLM experience, a WLM and DB2 session, and a WebSphere Performance and Tuning session. In our Newssection on page 4, we include information about some HIPER APARs, SAS tuning, catalog resource consumption, Assembler Boot Camp materials, DFSORT and ICETOOL enhancements, and a free email filter.
Finally, on page 35 we pass along some good information about the capture of DB2 CPU time.
2. TUNING Letter CD-ROM
The 2004 TUNING Letter CD-ROM arrived, and it was sent out to customers at the end of last week. This CD-ROM also includes our latest CPU Charts and last year’s SHARE presentations. We hope you enjoy it.
3. Security Flaw in Google Desktop Search Tool
In Cheryl’s List #94 we told you about a free desktop search tool designed by the people who gave us the Google search engine. But a recent news article indicated that some Rice University scientists had discovered a security flaw that might allow a remote user to access your computer using the search tool as a gateway. You can read the original news article at http://money.cnn.com/2004/12/20/technology/google/?cnn=yes.
Google has indicated that they have corrected the flaw, and encourage all users running an early version of the search tool to download the latest version at http://desktop.google.com.
4. Adobe Reader 7.0 is Available
The Adobe Reader is a software program that most of us use regularly to browse the PDF files that exist on the Internet and in many applications – including our individual TUNING Letters and the TUNING Letter CD-ROM collection. So we were excited when we saw that a new version (7.0) of the Adobe Reader is now available.
The new version seems to be much faster than the older Version 6.0, which is a real plus when you use a tool as often as we use this one. You can download Version 7.0 from http://www.adobe.com.
We still recommend that users keep a copy of Adobe Reader Version 5.0 installed, and that is the version we distribute as part of the TUNING Letter CD-ROM. The reason is because Version 5.0 will let you do a search and sort the results by the creation date of the articles. This is useful when looking for TUNING Letter articles, because you typically are more interested in the more recent articles on a given topic. We are hoping that Adobe will incorporate this lost feature again in a future release.
5. New Open Source Journal
If you are interested in the open source phenomenon, you might want to check out a new publication that addresses these issues. A recent post on the popular IBM-Main discussion group alerted us to the fact that Thomas Communications, Inc. is now publishing the Enterprise Open Systems Journal. Bob Thomas and his company have been the force behind many past and present IT publications, including Mainframe Journal, Enterprise Systems Journal, DB2 Journal and z/Journal.
Visit their Web site at http://eosj.com to register for your free subscription.
6. CICS Batch Application Control
In our previous issue we included a short item about a new product called IBM CICS Batch Application Control for z/OS (see TUNING Letter 2004 No. 6, page 46). This prompted an email from Bruce H. Bentley of Federated Mutual Insurance:
I noticed in your newsletter the IBM CICS BAC product mentioned. This product is referred to as IBM CICS BAC not IBMBAC as was mentioned in the newsletter.
As mentioned in the announcement letter: ‘CICS Batch Application Control (CICS BAC) is the newest member of IBM’s growing CICS Tools portfolio.’
Bruce is correct that the commonly abbreviated name for this product is the IBM CICS BAC product. As we noted last month, more detailed information is available by visiting the IBM announcements Web site (http://www.ibm.com/news) and searching for announcement letter #204-267.
7. SHARE Celebrates 50th Birthday
Congratulations to the SHARE user group on its upcoming 50th birthday this year! Does this mean they now qualify for a senior-citizen discount? The first SHARE meeting was held in 1955 in Santa Monica, California. Other meetings that first year were held in Philadelphia and Boston. SHARE was more ambitious in 1956, and held four meetings (San Francisco, Chicago, Denver and New York City). Since then, they have fallen back to the regular pattern of two meetings per year and have not missed a year since they started. That’s a pretty good record!
SHARE in 2005 will be held in Anaheim and Boston. There are sure to be some birthday celebrations at both conferences, so we hope you can attend. It’s not too late to register for the Anaheim conference, which will be held February 27th – March 4th. Visit the SHARE Web site at http://www.share.org for more details. Happy Birthday SHARE, and may you have 50 more!
Stay tuned!