Cheryl’s List #139 – March 2, 2010

1.  New – SHARE Webinars!
2.  Suggestions for SHARE
3.  Latest Red Alert

1.  New – SHARE Webinars!

If you can’t make it to SHARE in Denver, consider attending it (with your office mates) without leaving your office.  For the first time, SHARE is providing registration for an online virtual SHARE.  It’s $490 (introductory rate) for attendance to the live content or archived on-demand access for six months.  SHARE has selected a set of sessions (24 hours of sessions during the four days) that are based on popular choice.  I’m thrilled that my “Hot Flashes” session was chosen as part of the program.

In addition to most of the keynote presentations (such as IBM System z General Manager, Tom Rosamilla, providing a glimpse into future architecture and software), some of the technical sessions you can attend include favorites like z/OS 1.11 migration, z/OS 1.11: Sysprog Goody Bay, Bit Bucket x’27’, SOA, and cloud computing.  You can find out more about the presentations, schedule, and registration at www.share.org, then click on “SHARE Online from Seattle!“.

2.  Suggestions for SHARE

Here are a few suggestions for SHARE:

• If you haven’t made reservations yet for SHARE, be sure to remember my suggestion (Cheryl’s List #138) to plan to stay through the end of the day on Thursday so you won’t miss important sessions.
• Look into the discounts that SHARE offers. The regular rate for SHARE members is $1675 for the week. Early birds (before 1/22/2010) registered for $1465. Speakers get a discount rate of $1300, students get a rate of $250, faculty members get a rate of $837.50, and first-time attendees get a dis-counted rate of $1425.
• Whether you’re attending the SHARE conference or not, remember that most presentations will be online for about five months and available to anyone.  (You need to be a SHARE member to look at older proceedings.)  In order to find which presentations to look at, create a personal itinerary for yourself on the SHARE website.  Go through the four-day schedule picking all of the sessions that appeal to you.  Then, as the handouts are uploaded during the week of SHARE, you can view and download the sessions that you want.  Many presentations will be available well before the conference, and others will be available within a couple of weeks after the conference ends.
• There will be many sessions on migrating to z/OS 1.11, which became available in September 2009 (after the last SHARE).  Since you’ll be migrating to z/OS 1.11 at some point in the future, these migration sessions are extremely helpful for your preparation.  Do a search for ‘z/os 1.11’ and you’ll find ten sessions on migration and user experiences.
• Review all of the sessions from a project in your area of interest.  The Enterprise-wide Capacity & Performance (EWCP) project will be of interest to most of our readers.  EWCP schedules 24 sessions, MVSE (MVS Core Technologies for system programmers) schedules 68 sessions, CICS has 27 sessions, Database (i.e. DB2) has 19 sessions, Linux has 34 sessions, VM has 25 sessions, and MVSS (storage management) has 38 sessions.  In addition, there are over 20 more projects that include subjects like Assembler, COBOL, Language Environment, IMS, WebSphere, personal development, Communications Server (VTAM & TCP/IP), and application development tools.
• Do a search in the schedule for your area of interest by using keywords.  A search of ‘cics’ (caps don’t matter) gives you 39 sessions (and not all of them are from the CICS project).  A search on ‘performance’ gives you 83 sessions.
• If you’re new to z/OS, look for the following: zNextGen project (all sessions), and also look for keywords of ‘znextgen’ (8 hits), ‘boot camp’ (12 hits), ‘101’ (3), ‘dummies’ (2), and ‘basic’ (39).
• Here are some of my favorite sessions that I think our readers will enjoy (by day):

Monday

1. 2200 (11am) – MVSE Opening and z/OS Hot Topics.  Provides important APARs, as well as the latest information from the Washington Systems Center (WSC).
2. 2100 (1:30pm) – EWCP Project Opening & WSC z/OS Performance Hot Topics.  Don’t miss Kathy Walsh and her WSC tips.
3. 2224 (1:30pm – Boy, is this a conflict for me!) – z/OS New Facilities and Features.  See where we’re heading (such as z/OS 1.12) from John Eells.
4. 2140 (3pm) – WLM Update for z/OS 1.10 & 1.11.  Of course I have to check out what’s new with WLM.
5. 2209 (3pm – another conflict!) – Getting the Most From a z10 Using the Latest Releases of z/OS.  I would never want to miss Bob Rogers.
6. 2328 (3pm) – z/OS 1.11 JES2 Product Update and Latest Status.  This always has useful information.
7. 2404 (3pm) – DFSMS 1.11 Update.  Expect a lot of new support for EAVs – Extended Address Volumes.
8. 2500 (3pm – I can’t be in five places at once!) – zNextGen Project Opening and Keynote.  If you’re new to z/OS or manage people new to z/OS, this is extremely important.

Tuesday

1. 0906 (9:30am) – The Future is Today, System z Vision for Enterprise Modernization.  Anything that Karl Freund says is of interest to me, and should be of interest to you.
2. 2205 (11am) – System z: Building the Business Case for System z.  This is especially important for sites that are considering moving off the mainframe – silly billies!
3. 2249 (11am) – z/OSMF 1.11 Overview, Implementation and Configuration.  This is my favorite new sysprog tool for z/OS – and the cost is right – $0.
4. 2113 (1:30pm) – The z10 CPU Measurement Facility Overview and WSC Experiences.  If you haven’t heard John Burg talk about this great new (no charge) hardware monitor (zCMF), then don’t miss this session.
5. 9219 (1:30pm) – Cloud Computing with IBM System z.  You know that z/OS will be in the middle of this game.
6. 2245 (4:30pm) – IBM and a User Present Their Philosophy About Applying Maintenance on z/OS.  This was my favorite session last SHARE and I think it’s a requirement for every system programmer and performance analyst.  It also inspired our Focus article for our Tuning Letter 2009 No. 5.  Be a little pro-active and you can improve both the performance and reliability of your system.  So don’t miss this session by Greg Daynes and  Brian Peterson.  (This was a last minute change so might not show up on your schedule yet.)

Wednesday

1. 2115 (9:30am) – Framework for Doing Capacity Sizing on System z Processors.  Understand how to collect data for using zPCR for capacity estimates.  Also see the next two sessions.
2. 2110/2111 (11am, 1:30pm) – zPCR Capacity Sizing & Lab.  If you don’t know how to use zPCR, this is really a must.
3. 2205 (11am) – z/OS 1.11: User Experience.  I think that the user experiences are one of the greatest benefits of SHARE.
4. 2112 (1:30pm) – WLM, Capacity Planning, and the RMF Workload Activity Report.  Glenn Anderson is always great, and this introduction to capacity planning using WLM data in RMF reports is no exception.
5. 2222/2223 (1:30pm, 4:30pm)) – z/OS 1.11: Migration (2 parts).  Marna Walle’s sessions on migration are a must for your move to z/OS 1.11.
6. 2294 (3pm, 4:30pm) – ISPF Hidden Treasures and New Features.  I’ve never attended one of these sessions without learning at least five new techniques.
7. 2149 (4:30pm) – Meet the Experts: WLM, Performance and Capacity Planning Topics.  Bring your questions to this panel (which includes me) and stump them!
8. 2353 (6pm) – z/OS Requirements: Influencing IBM Development.  See my sessions below for more information.

Thursday

1. 2114 (9:30am) – The 7 Habits of the Highly Effective Capacity Planner.  Denise Kalm always provides valuable techniques for capacity planners.
2. 6115 (9:30am) – Reduce costs: Getting the Most out of zIIPs and zAAPs with DB2 for z/OS.  Not interested in saving money – then don’t attend.  Greg Dyck is one of the most knowledgeable people I know.
3. 2118 (11am) – Exploring the New SMF 113 Processor Measurement.  I’m sure that Peter Enrico will provide a lot of insight about the new record produced by the zCMF tool (see session 2113 above on Tuesday).
4. 2229 (11am) – A z/OS Systems Programmer Productivity Tool Bag.  Some people have said that Bette Brody’s popular session was worth the whole cost of the conference.
5. 2154 (1:30pm) – RMF – The Latest and Greatest.  Horst Sinram from RMF development shows all the latest facilities in RMF.
6. 2208 (1:30pm) – Bit Bucket x’27’.  Ed Jaffe, Sam Knutson, & Skip Robinson always provide surprise topics with astonishing techie things they’ve found over the last six months – this session is always great.
7. 2109 (Thu, 3pm) – Cheryl’s Hot Flashes #23.  See my sessions below for more information.
8. 2235 (3pm) – z/OS Mean Time to Recovery Improvements.  Frank Kyne was my team leader during my Poughkeepsie residency working on the Mean Time To Recovery Redbook, and he provides a great session describing fascinating things that we found.  It’s not fair that I can’t attend because I’m speaking at the same time!
9. 2228 (4:30pm) – z/OS 1.11: Sysprog Goody Bag.  Anything that Bob Rogers talks about is fascinating, especially this session on neat things in z/OS.
10. 2007 (6pm) – z/OS Ask the Experts Panel & MVS Program Closing.  Come get any of your remaining questions answered.

• If you want to find me:

1. 2353 (Wed, 6pm) – z/OS Requirements: Influencing IBM Development.  The MVSE project will be showing people how to submit and how to vote on SHARE requirements in order to influence IBM development. We discussed this subject at length in our Tuning Letter 2009 No. 6.  You can attend this session and get signed up and start voting during the session.
2. 2109 (Thu, 3pm) – Cheryl’s Hot Flashes #23.  Here’s where I give my views on the most important and interesting things to cross my path during the last six months.
3. I’ll also be giving some very short presentations at the following sessions:

• 2200 (Mon, 11am) – MVSE Opening and z/OS Hot Topics
• 2500 (Mon, 3pm) – zNextGen Project Opening and Keynote
• 2245 (Tue, 4:30pm) – IBM and a User Present Their Philosophy About Applying Maintenance on z/OS

• Eat! One of the most interesting times you’ll have is if you attend one of the project dinners.  Pick your project, and attend a session where you can sign up for the dinner.  This is a great way to meet those people most active in SHARE.  I plan on attending the EWCP and MVSE project dinners if I can.

3.  Latest Red Alert

On February 26, IBM issued a new Red Alert. You can sign up to automatically receive Red Alerts at http://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/set2/sas/f/redAlerts/home.html.

 2010.02.26 – All TCPIP users on z/OS 1.11

A logic error in TCPIP on z/OS 1.11 can cause applications using ASYNCIO Writes to be driven twice. The application data presented on the socket write operation is sent over the TCP connection twice, thus corrupting the data stream. This can affect various applications and subsystems using z/OS TCPIP ASYNCIO on the sending side, such as Websphere MQ, JES and non-IBM products. Please see APAR PM08514 (OPEN) for the details and symptoms that may result.

Stay Tuned!