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1. RMF APAR Correction
2. Cheryl Watson's TUNING Letter 2001, No. 1

1. RMF APAR Correction
On page 4 of the 2001, No. 1 newsletter, I mentioned an RMF APAR, OW47563. This was a typo and should have been listed as OW47653.

2. Cheryl Watson's TUNING Letter 2001, No. 1
The forty-four page 2001, No. 1 TUNING Letter was emailed to electronic subscribers on Friday, March 23. The print issues will be probably be mailed out on April 2. Here are a few of the topics we covered. You can purchase a printed copy of the current TUNING Letter for $85. 

z900 and z/OS News
There are several items in this issue relating the new operating system, z/OS, and the new hardware, z900. The biggest news is the scare about the poor performance of some workloads on the z900, especially SAS. With quick work by IBM and SAS, a solution was found that appears to resolve the performance problems first experienced. There are a few outstanding items that are currently being worked on. See the notes about z900 status in Cheryl's Lists #50 and #51 on page 43, and my SHARE session (Cheryl's Hot Flashes #5) on page 27. My SHARE session also describes the real value of MSUs (Millions of Service Units). Since many sites are starting to use MSUs for capacity reporting, it's important to understand that the calculated value of MSU using the service unit per second value can vary from published MSUs by over 20%. There was an announcement that the hardware data compression on the z900 has significantly improved. I'm looking for confirmation of this from customers. Page 28.

Catalog Performance
I've received several requests for recommendations for tuning catalogs. Michael Friske of Fidelity Investments has provided an excellent article on catalog performance. Some fairly simple techniques can produce significant improvements in catalog performance. Additional APARs and notes related to catalog performance are included at the end of his article. Page 10.

Elsewhere in This Issue
Our S/390 News on page 4 includes the following items: changes when running in 64-bit mode, interesting APARs (several still OPEN), how to keep BTAM and GAM after their withdrawal, loss of conditional JCL processing, new SMP/E function to facilitate packaging a product for shipment over a network, new white papers, and several new publications. In my SHARE Trip Report on page 26, I cover: moving to fewer CPs, DB2 archive logs, how to confirm that critical duplex data sets are separate, withdrawal from service for COBOL for MVS, several WLM notes, and pointers to some excellent SHARE sessions which will soon be on the Web. Finally, page 37 provides a warning about using the CICS TS 1.3 Migration Facility.

Stay tuned!
Cheryl Watson

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