Short takes

Sometimes I'm making a couple of bookmarks thinking 'I'm going to blog on this'. But then I forget about it or there are other things to talk about. So here's an excellent opportunity to catch up on some of those and to mention some new, short messages.

• Doing this presales job for quite a few years now, I think my actual experience with DB2 is getting a bit rusty. Did you know there are 16 (yes 16) Explain Tables in DB2 for z/OS. Of course you did. Or, if you didn't, take a look at Willie Favero's blog post about it : 'Explaining the history of EXPLAIN tables' clarifying (pun intentionally avoided) it all to you.

• There was a z/VSE GSE meeting in Brussels at the end of last year with the two most renowned speakers (at least that I know of) on the subject : Klaus Goebel and Wilhem Mild. Here are there presentations :

  z/VSE in an Elevator - Dr. K. Goebel

  Modernization solutions with z/VSE - Dr. W. Mild

  What's new in z/VM and Linux - Dr. K Goebel

  Modern Application development environments for z/VSE - Dr. W. Mild

  z/VSE Pricing options - Dr. K Goebel

  SOA for z/VSE, Disaster Recovery Scenarios and tools - Dr. W. Mild

• On February 26, 2010 at 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM CST (7:00 PM Brussels Time there's a technical webinar on XIV. You can register over here. As a matter a fact it's already a second presentation on the topic. The page also mentions the first one which you can download from IBM's ftp site. It's this one : 20091118XIV_pt_1.wmv. If, just like me, you might have problems with the G2M3 codec in Windows Media Player, you can download it from the Citrix site.

• Here's one I've mentioned before : the z/OS Platform evaluation test team. They run the final verification tests on a z/OS release before it becomes GA. But more interesting : they gather their experiences and publish them. The publication usually comes a couple of months after the product goes GA. So late december they published 'z/OS V1R11.0 System z Platform Test Report for z/OS and Linux Virtual Servers'. which you can find on the Library tab of the site.

• IBM VM Developer Home Pages : I accidentally stumbled across these pages from some VM Developers. Just take a look at them, some are quite interesting. I just take a couple of quick picks. Bill Bitner has some presentations but he also has a variation on the 'You must be a mainframer if ...' list, with his 'If ... you're probably not on VM'. Tung-Sing Chong has an example of 'Cloning Linux Images in z/VM' with install/setup instructions. And I also liked Steve Wilkins' 'VM-Linux on System z Storage Technologies' presentation.
  

• I also already mentioned the 'Myth vs Truth' System z page before. Well, I have the impression they added some 'myths' (or is it 'truths') about the mainframe. They also incorporated some videos that have been around on Youtube for a while like 'The IBM System z can babysit your kids'. But do take a look at the Myth vs Truth site as well. I like the ending of those clips.
  
  

As I always say, just check them out !