Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter
Winter 2023 SHARE Conference Is on Next Week
The 2023 Winter SHARE conference will be held in the Atlanta Hyatt Regency hotel next week. This is an abbreviated conference (3 full days - Monday to Wednesday), however there are more sessions on Sunday than normal, so if you are attending check out the agenda to see if any of those Sunday sessions would be of interest to you. Also, make sure to download the SHARE app for your phone – apart from the up-to-date technical agenda you can also use it to create your own agenda of the sessions...
Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter 2022 No. 4 Available Now
Subscribers to Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter can find the latest 139-page issue, 2022 No. 4, on our publications website. In this issue, you will find the following articles: One of the most consistently popular Tuning Letter articles is the User Experiences and Tips one. This issue’s article opens with a reminder to readers that the FREE GSE UK 3-day virtual conference starts tomorrow (February 7th). Refer to the article for a link to the agenda and the registration page. The article also...
Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter 2022 No. 3 Now Available
Subscribers to Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter can find the latest 132-page issue, 2022 No. 3, on our publications website. In this issue, you will find the following articles: In response to their very experienced mainframers heading for the retirement exit, companies are starting to replenish their pool of mainframe skills. But where to find the people with the potential to become the mainframe experts of the future? Building the Next Gen, One Apprentice At a Time discusses how a Registered...
Watson & Walker SHARE Presentations
This is just a short post to let our subscribers know about Watson & Walker presentations at SHARE this week. Those of you know that attend SHARE will know what a hectic week this is. We will follow up with highlights from our week in Columbus after we've had a chance to catch our breath. Cheryl is otherwise engaged this week, so Mario and Frank will be representing Watson & Walker at this conference. Our sessions are: Wednesday, 13:15, An MVS System Programmer's Trip to...
Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter 2022 No. 2 Now Available
Subscribers to Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter can find the latest 97-page issue, 2022 No. 2, on our publications website. In this issue, you will find the following articles: We are finding that a growing portion of our time is spent working with customers that are feeling a growing anxiety as they look at the demographics of their mainframe infrastructure support teams. The reality is that most departments don't have enough resources today. And then they look at how many staff they are...
Cheryl Watson’s May 2022 CPU Chart Now Available
The latest edition of Cheryl's CPU Chart is now available to subscribers on our publications website. This update adds the information for the 317 z16 models to the existing database that reaches all the way back to the z900 models (a total of 2654 IBM mainframe models). In addition to the spreadsheet that contains over 40 attributes for each model, the accompanying PDF discusses some key performance characteristics, as well as providing invaluable background information about the workloads...
Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter 2022 No. 1 Now Available
Subscribers to Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter can find the latest 140-page issue, 2022 No. 1, on our publications website. In this issue, you will find the following articles: A 52-page ‘introduction’ to IBMs latest mainframe, the z16. The z16 was announced on April 5th, and will be generally available on May 31st. We expect that many subscribers are reviewing z16 proposals now, so we wanted to get this information to you as soon as possible. This issue focuses on the performance aspects of...
Winter 2022 SHARE Conference
Hopefully all our readers are aware that the first face-to-face SHARE conference in two years is taking place in Dallas, Texas next week. Because this is the first transition back to a live format, this will be a truncated conference, in terms of its duration and the number of tracks. Rather than the normal five days, plus Sunday, this SHARE will run from Monday, March 28th to Wednesday, March 30th, with the usual ancillary sessions on the preceding Sunday. For those that are unable to...
Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter 2021 No. 4 Now Available
Subscribers to Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter can find the latest 146-page issue, 2021 No. 4, on our publications website (https://watsonwalkerpublications.com/). In this issue, you will find the following articles: 2021 ended with the world’s media full of stories about the ‘Log4j vulnerability’, and how it was possibly the largest ever security exposure. Log4j is an open source logging utility used by, depending on your source of information, somewhere between thousands and millions of...
Log4j Scanning Tool for z/OS
Hello All, We’re sure that you have heard about the security exposure in the Log4j Java package? It has been described as “Could be the most serious security threat ever seen”. While the media occasionally exaggerate things, this is one that everyone should be aware of – it potentially affects everything from the biggest mainframe system, down to your little Linux server at home. Hopefully you all run some anti-virus package on your home PCs and you have automatic software update enabled. ...