Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are the latest exciting technologies and buzz in the business and tech worlds, taking over from the past buzz like GDPR, analytics, IoT and Big Data. These topics have already (arguably) become mainstream...
IBM Simplifying Mainframe Software Pricing When you hear the words mainframe software pricing, what do you think of? A common reaction is to ignore it unless you are actively negotiating a new contract with IBM. And even then, the general consensus is that it is...
Your Db2 database The IBM mainframe and its Db2 database is the transaction processing workhorse for the world’s biggest banks, insurers and financial services companies. It was designed to execute their high-intensity transaction processing workloads very...
The challenge- divergent needs Viewing IT as a business enabler but also as a major cost center, business leaders demand that IT management find a way to reduce their budget while continuing to deliver excellent performance and availability in an ever more dynamic...
If you drive around suburbia in the summer, you'll probably notice that some lawns are greener than others. It's not because the grass on those lawns is genetically superior, or because the soil on one side of the fence is richer than the other. Nor does one lawn get...
An index is a database structure, separate from the data, that provides a method to search; it provides a technique for both rapid random lookups and efficient access of ordered records. Hashing is an indexing technique that leverages mathematical techniques to...
The FICON Control Unit Port (CUP) provides an in-band management interface defined by IBM that defines the channel command words (CCWs) that the FICON host can use for managing the switch. The protocol used is the IBM version of the ANSI FC-SB4 single-byte command...
Like many of my fellow Planet Mainframe readers, I belong to several LinkedIn professional groups. Recently, there was a vibrant discussion thread going on in one such group that discussed subject matter experts and their value. It gave me an idea for a blog post....
17 July 2017 marked the IBM announcement of the latest IBM mainframe: the IBM z14. Congratulations to the IBM Z team on a successful launch of what looks to be yet another in a long and distinguished history of superb enterprise computing platforms. Similar to the...
Timing, timekeeping, time synchronization, more specifically accurate synchronization, is a key requirement for modern information technology systems. This is especially true for industries involved in transaction processing such as the financial industry. As such,...
