Episode 7 "We Were On a Break"

Here are the show notes for Episode 7 "We Were On a Break". The show is called "We Were On a Break" because:

  • It's been a very long time since we last recorded an episode. You should read nothing into other than our schedules and, in particular, Martin's long holiday put paid to recording for a while.

    But now we're back...

We had one piece of follow up:

  • IBM Doc Buddy - available for iOS and Android.

    This app has been enhanced with new components (aka libraries) and has received some fixes that users have found. There's a very reponsive team working on this tool! This app is now better than the old LookAt tool, since reason codes can be searched.

Mainframe

Our "Mainframe" topic was a discussion on Continuous Delivery.

Marna talked about four important references to understand what the z/OS platform is doing for Continuous Delivery. (IBM is embracing Agile development for many new functions, and will be providing those functions to customers in a Continuous Delivery method.)

Takeaway: some products will be putting their new functions in the service stream, while others might be putting them in releases. Read announcements carefully to see which of your products is following which model.

Performance

Our "Performance" topic was an extension of this blog post of Martin's: Why Do We Keep Building Bigger Machines?

We acknowledge this is quite a high level treatment but it's a question that we're sure has been in the back of lots of minds. We've ideas to take some of the subtopics and make them topics in their own right.

Topics

In our "Topics" section we discussed what we (especially Martin) are using for creating presentations these days.

Products Martin mentioned were:

Interesting Customer Requirements

Here's two customer requirements we've taken notice of. Of course, IBM may or may not decide to do them, but they might be interesting if you'd like to vote on them.

  • "zFS Definitions of Greater Than 4 GB Not Being SMS-Managed Should be Available Under IDCAMS", ID 92523

  • "Let IBM Knowledge Center search within a manual and simplify the use", ID 93288 .

Contacting Us

You can reach Marna on Twitter as mwalle and by email.

You can reach Martin on Twitter as martinpacker and by email.

Om Podcasten

Martin Packer (Principal z Systems Investigator) and Marna Walle (z/OS Development) are two IBMers talking about whatever z/OS topics come to mind.  Often guest experts weigh in on current technologies.  This podcast will give you timely, interesting, and entertaining z/OS topics.  Each episode comprises a “Mainframe” item, a “Performance” item, and “Topics” which is anything Martin or Marna care to talk about, which might or might not be related to their jobs.  So it goes…