Episode 30 "Choices Choices‪"‬ Mainframe, Performance, Topics Podcast

Short show notes - long show notes here

We have a special guest joining us for the performance topic, Scott Ballentine.


What’s New


New news for CustomPac removal date, which has been extended past January 2022. The reason was to accommodate
the desired Data Set Merge capability in z/OSMF which customers needed. For the new withdrawl date, it is planned to be announced in 2Q2022.


Mainframe - Only in V2.5
This topic was looking at some new functions that are only in z/OS V2.5.


Data Set File System, planned to be available in 1Q 2022.
Dynamic Change Master Catalog
RACF data base encryption has a statement of direction.
Increase z/OS Memory limit above 4TB to 16TB.
More Concurrently ”Open” VSAM Linear Datasets. Db2 exploits with Apar PH09189, and APAR PH33238 is suggested.
ISPF Updates to ISPF in support of PDSE V2 member generations, and SUBMIT command to add an optional parameter SUBSYS.
Access Method Services - IDCAMS - DELETE MASK has two new options TEST and EXCLUDE
z/OS Encryption Readiness Technology zERT
There’s a lot of other stuff rolled back to V2.4


Performance - What's the Use? - with special guest Scott Ballentine
This discussion is a summary from a joint presentation on Usage Data and IFAUSAGE

The topic is motivational because customers can get a lot of value of out this usage data, and understand the provenance
of IFAUSAGE data.
A macro vendors or anybody use can use to show which products are used and how. It can show names: Product Vendor, Name, ID, Version, Qualifier,
Show numbers: Product TCB, Product SRB, FUNCTIONDATA
The data is ostensibly for SCRT, which is fed by SMF 70 and SMF 89
Scott talked about encoding via IFAUSAGE, appears in SMF 30 and 89-1
SMF 89-1: Software Levels query, Db2 / MQ subsystems query
SMF 30: Topology (e.g. CICS connecting to Db2 or MQ), Some numbers (Connections’ CPU)
Both SMF 30 and 89: FUNCTIONDATA
Examples were mentioned that might inspire developers to think about how they code IFAUSAGE
Hope is developers will delight customers by using IFAUSAGE right, and customers will take advantage in the way shown with reporting examples.


Topics - Choices, Choices
This topics is about how to choose a language to use for which purpose. Different languages were discussed for different needs.

Use Case: Serving HTML?
Host consideration: Running on e.g. laptop?
Host consideration: Running on z/OS?
Overall lesson: Choose the language that respects the problem at hand.


On the blog
Marna's blog is here

Martin has quite a few new blog articles here
So It Goes