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1. Updates
2. Cheryl Watson's TUNING Letter 2001, No. 5 Summary
3. Happy Holidays!

1. Updates

Here are two updates for our 2001, No. 5 TUNING Letter:

Brian Currah of BDC Computer Services, Inc. pointed out that on page 6 the reference to APAR OW48268 for FICON and I/O priority should have specified APAR OW47845 instead.  This will be corrected in the print version, but has already been sent to our electronic subscribers.

On page 5, I complained that there had been no action on two APARs (OW36642, OW38769) for LLA and VLF that had been closed as FIN/SUG.  Greg Dyck, senior IBM guru, indicated that OW38769 was actually fixed in z/OS 1.2, but the APAR has not been updated to reflect the fact.

2. Cheryl Watson's TUNING Letter 2001, No. 5 Summary

The forty-four page 2001, No. 5 TUNING Letter was emailed to electronic subscribers on Friday, December 7.  Print subscribers should receive their issue during the week of December 17th.  Here are a few of the topics we covered, taken from our "Management Issues."  You can purchase a printed copy of the current TUNING Letter for $85.
 
Web Serving
Our focus of this issue and the next is on how to define and tune a Web server on the mainframe.  More and more installations are looking into using their mainframe as their primary Web server.  After all, it is the most reliable hardware around, and most of the data accessed by Web applications is already located on the mainframe.  There has been so much interest in this topic that we're devoting two issues of our newsletter to it.  In this first issue we describe the current state of the IBM Web serving on the mainframe, provide a guide to the terminology, and show how best to install and define it.  The most important thing to understand about Web serving is that (in most companies) it will need to have the highest priority in the system.  The reason for this is simple.  If you don't provide adequate response time (and that's closer to 3 seconds these days, rather than the 8 seconds that was acceptable a few years ago), your customers may go elsewhere.  You don't necessarily need to have the fastest Web site around, but you'd better be faster than your competitor's.  You don't want people leaving your site for your competition.  From a manager's point of view, I'd recommend that you review the first part of our Focus article on page 16 to better understand the variety of possible Web server configurations on your mainframe.  Because IBM's Web server uses enclaves and application environments, we've also included a review of those on page 30.

Compatibility Mode is Going
The z/OS R1.2 release that came out in October is the last release that supports WLM compatibility mode.  If you haven't migrated to goal mode yet, it's more than time.  Our Web site at <www.watsonwalker.com> provides several articles and tools to help people move to goal mode.  We've included an article on page 37 from a user who went to goal mode which shows the process used for the migration.

Software Pricing Assurance
In our last newsletter with its focus on IBM's newest software pricing, I mentioned the existence of a pricing assurance from IBM that gives you a grace period for moving to their full pricing structure.  Without the pricing assurance, you would actually pay much more in software charges as you migrate your machines to z900s and your software to z/OS.  IBM doesn't publish the details of this plan anywhere, but it is available, so be sure to ask for it.  (Page 40)

Elsewhere in This Issue
Our News section on page 4 provides several useful items:  HIPER and performance APARs, CA-MIM recommended APARs, z/OS R2 changes in JES, Linux support for MP 3000 machines, DFSORT and hiperspaces, migration tips, and the latest WSC flashes.  Finally, in our Q&A on page 41 we provide some suggestions for finding items in past newsletters.

3.  Happy Holidays!

At a time in our lives when we need peace on earth more than ever, our best wishes go out to you all during this holiday season. 
 
Stay tuned!
Cheryl Watson and Tom Walker

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