Hot Topics Newsletter - Issue 28

The good part : there's a new Hot Topics newsletter and it's stuffed with good articles. The bad part : it's clear now that there will be only one release per year. Be tempted, good people of the newsletter, to give us a February release again as well ! You can download the new issue over here and although I see Facebook more as a medium for private matters, Hot Topics thinks otherwise and you can keep up to date with them on Facebook as well.

As I said, it's stuffed with good articles. The focus is on z/OS 2.1 and on the role of the mainframe in the world of CAMS(S) : Cloud, Analytics, Mobile, Social and Security. Let me pick out just a few, but by all means, do read the rest as well.
There's a good summary about 'System z in a mobile world' with particulary also a closer look on the role of CICS and DB2.
z/OSMF seems like it's here to stay : we learn about some APIs like e.g. the z/OSMF Jobs Interface (aka SubmitAPI) and there's a good introduction to 'z/OSMF Resource Monitoring-Reloaded'.
'Not all quiet on the consoles front' tells us about the possibility "to allow consoles to be dynamically added and deleted".
There's an intriguing (to me at least) article on z/OS Fixed Block Architecture services with z/OS Distributed Data Backup (ZDDB). Let me give you a little quote

z/OS Distributed Data Backup (zDDB) is a no-charge licensed feature. When you install zDDB on DS8000 devices, distributed host systems that are attached through Fibre Channel connection (FICON®) interfaces can access logical unit number (LUN) devices containing fixed block data. Typically, FBA LUN devices are connected to Linux®, Windows®, and UNIX® operating systems.
With zDDB, two views of the disk devices are presented, one for z/OS and one for the distributed system, as shown in Figure 2.

Here's this Figure 2

There's also a great deal of attention to the new z/OS 2.1, its migration and to recent innovations like zAWARE, zEDC, the RoCE card and so on.

So, as I always say, just check it out !

Red Alert - z/OS 2.1 DFSORT records out of sequence

I know I'm a bit late with this one but I still want to mention it, just in case you might've missed it.

Red Alert : z/OS 2.1 DFSORT records out of sequence

Abstract:

There is a potential exposure for out of sequence records with DFSORT for users on release z/OS 2.1.

Description:

At z/OS 2.1 code levels, DFSORT is intermittently returning records out of sequence. There is no data loss, but records may be returned out of sequence to the DFSORT output file. If VERIFY=YES is set at the installation level, out of sequence conditions are already being detected. This problem only occurs in z/OS 2.1. No prior releases of DFSORT are affected.

Please see APAR PI22817 for more details and latest information.

Users affected :

All z/OS 2.1 DFSORT (HSM1L00) users who SORT data with DFSORT using the performance path may be affected if there is insufficient virtual storage below the line at the time of execution. In other words the potential for error exists for all users of DFSORT SORT function on z/OS 2.1, but not all users will experience the problem.

Recommended Actions:

Enable VERIFY=YES at the installation level to detect out of sequence conditions. Affected jobs can be rerun with DEBUG $NOPFP$ to circumvent the issue.

In addition, a ++APAR is available to disable the affected performance path, as a temporary circumvention, using a new DFSORT installation option.

See APAR PI22817 for details. 

If you haven't signed up to the Red Alerts by now, you really should do it. Just go over here.