Latest Articles
Tell me about COBOL
Let me start by telling you a story… Once there was a big town and everyone went to school and learned to read and write and they bought and shared books. They liked reading. Then, some of the townspeople decided that it would be beneficial for everyone if the town...
Still COBOL After All These Years?
Have you seen the recent headlines? Wanted urgently: People who know a half century-old computer language so states can process unemployment claims (CNN 04/08/2020) and An Ancient Computer Language Is Slowing America’s Giant Stimulus (Bloomberg 04/13/2020). These...
Mainframe modernization remains a top priority
The mainframe community is rightly proud of our platform’s ability to accelerate digital transformation and protect enterprises against growing cyber threats. The IBM mainframe’s security, resiliency, and scalability are exactly what is required to deliver growth...
Understanding how a ‘CM0 SL1 – ACK’ Input Message sent to IMS Connect works
IMS Connect (ICON) is the TCP/IP gateway for IMS. So, besides running the traditional IMS transactions on z/OS, an IMS programmer/DBA can now leverage applications running on the distributed side of the world (a JAVA Web Application, for example) to be able to easily...
Optimizing Mainframe Data Access
Nobody can deny that the amount of data that we store and manage continues to expand at a rapid pace. A recent study by analysts at IDC Corporation concludes that the size of what they call The Global Datasphere will reach 175 zettabytes by 2025. This data growth is...
Db2 12 for z/OS Buffer Pools – Recommendations for PGSTEAL, PGFIX and FRAMESIZE
Not too long ago, I received a note from the leader of a Db2 for z/OS database administration team, asking for my take on a Db2 12 buffer pool configuration set-up that his team had devised. An interesting characteristic of the configuration was the use of the options...
Embracing In-Memory Processing for Optimizing Performance
Organizations are always encouraging their IT professionals to obtain the highest level of performance out of their applications and systems. It only makes sense that business want to achieve value at a high level of return on their investment in IT. Of course,...
Removing Duplicates From a List in Elixir
Thanks to the Enum module, in Elixir we can trivially remove duplicates from a list. In the following example, we take a list of integers and pass it to the Enum.uniq/1 function which removes duplicates from the list without altering the original...
Developing with Elixir/OTP Course Review
Ruby was the first programming language I truly fell in love with. Yes, I had used several others before (and have since), but Ruby was and still is something dear to me. I can appreciate the usefulness of Python, the simplicity of Go, and the mind-expanding nature of...
Mainframe systems help to keep things going in a pandemic
While many of us are in pandemic mode—hopefully most people who CAN work remotely ARE working remotely. Unfortunately, some folks have lost their jobs at least temporarily, and are hopefully receiving financial assistance from one or more levels of government. And...
