Minutes of the GSE UK IMS Working Group Meeting - Old Farm Hotel, 18^th March 1998

Chairman: Frank Fleming (Frank.Fleming @ barclays.co.uk) - 01565-613581

Secretary: Peter Armstrong (peter_armstrong @ bmc.com) - 01276-419835

Administration

• Thanks
  • Welcome to sunny Bournville and special welcome to DBCTL people. Frank then went through the agenda.

• Minutes
  • Those who hadn't received the minutes should contact Andrew Jack to check name and address. Apologies for short notice, but room was booked for some of the other days we wanted and we had to move fast.

  • Are we sending out the minutes electronically?

• Matters arising
  • None.

• New Members / attendees
  • Welcome to new attendees from ITNET and Barclays

• Correspondence
  • Frank has had a communication from GSE about "expired" members - please see Frank to sort out.

• Apologies
  • List attached + John Hancock from CITL + Alan Cooper, who is in Santa Teresa.

• Other matters
  • Steering Committee meeting in South Bank on 12^th February. Ian Tyson now working for IBM - names and addresses of committee distributed together with details of the objectives of this working group. All committee members will continue in their current roles. DBCTL subgroup will continue to run for at least the next year. We welcome all users of IMS - DBCTL, CICS-DL/1 etc. Frank will be mailshotting the group to sort out membership, attendance etc. We are quite flush with cash at present, so we are looking at having an annual membership contribution which would entitle you to free attendance at our meetings with meeting fees only for extra attendees, non-contributors etc.

  • Aiming to run meetings mainly on Thursday where possible. Next meeting will be on Friday 12^th June (as we are hijacking IBM speaker on her way to the IMS Technical Conference in Munich).

  • Future meetings will be on 17^th September at University of Manchester, and 3^rd December in South Bank. 17/18 November is UK GSE national conference. We will have a DBCTL meeting at the same time.

  • Dougie provides a web site for this working group - he will put the agenda and the minutes up there. We are also looking at putting presentation handouts up there if possible. Dougie's website is http://web.online.co.uk/dougie.lawson/gse, and we are putting in links from the other GSE sites to make sure you can get at this from anywhere. Let Dougie know if there are any links from Dougie's home-page that you want put in.

  • We are endeavouring to avoid scheduling conflicts with other working groups, and are embarking on a program of advertising one another's offerings. Frank is talking to the chairmen of the CICS and DB2 working groups to get this going.

  • Grafton Database Consultants have moved into the IMS education scene - they have 3 courses available:
    • IMS DB/DC Concepts and Facilities
    • IMS Application Programming
    • IMS Systems Administration

IBM What's New - Pete Sadler (IBM UK)

• Details of education classes. Contact Pete or Alan for any of those scheduled on demand.

• IMS/DB2 Technical Conference is 15-19 June in Munich.

• Details of some product announcements. Browse the web at http://www.software.ibm.com/data/ims for information about IMS, related products, Red Books and new functions.

• A copy of the foils was distributed.

Which Backup or Recovery? (Peter Armstrong - BMC)

• Peter presented all the different ways of copying databases using hardware and/or software with their advantages and disadvantages. His objectives are to have a simple, fast (if batch), minimal disruption (if online), automated procedure and hence Peter considers anything involving manual intervention or complex recovery to be a non-starter. He is also firmly of the opinion that running without DBRC is not a viable option in the future.

• Peter's conclusions are that:
  • Proper image copies (and not pack dumps) are the only sensible way to copy IMS databases
  • There are lots of new options available (like NONRECOV, Incremental, Snapshot or whatever) that you should look at
  • You can't do it all with just the hardware alone.

• The only solution which can copy and check groups of databases consistently today is software based - in the future this software will exploit the hardware intelligently and fulfil

• Peter's objectives.

• A copy of the foils was distributed.

IMS Database Control Suite - Dougie Lawson (IBM UK)

• Dougie presented details of an integrated workbench of task oriented functions that helps the DBA/SysProg to better manage IMS databases, and the product supports utilities from all the vendors. Also designed to help people move to proper use of DBRC. There is even a RECON maintenance function, which generates the necessary DBRC commands for you.

• This product has not been announced / gone GA yet, but if you are interested in trying a Beta copy, contact Dougie.

• A copy of the foils was distributed.

Problems forum, hints and tips, contacts for lunch

• Frank spotted an open V6 APAR - how many people use dynamic allocation for IMS DBs? MDA LIB is an authorised library. This APAR will allow you to put dynamic allocation control blocks into a separate non-authorised library, which will probably make your auditors a lot happier. The dynamic allocation APAR is

  PQ12171 DYNAMIC ALLOCATION ENHANCEMENT TO ALLOW CONTROL AND DLI/SAS REGIONS TO USE NON-AUTHORIZED LIBRARY FOR DFSMDA MEMBERS.

• It is a V6 only APAR (but perhaps we could put pressure on IBM to retrofit) with a target date for closure of in June.

• Dougie - four PTFs for IMS V5 (UQ15198 UQ15199 UQ15200 UQ15201), which roll-up the Year 2000 changes. In other words if you put these four on you are in good shape.

• Requirements - none.

• Hints and tips
  • The hints and tips archive

  • Name: Tesco

    Problem: Anyone got any experience of synchronised recoveries between IMS and DB2?

    Contacts/Comments: Neil Price - TNT - they force a log switch in DB2 and then IMS to get an almost synchronised point.

LUNCH

Where is GSE going? - Phil Howard-Knight (Bank of America)

• Idea is to keep existing product working groups, but to group them under domains like e.g. e-business. Domain manager would then react to change to start up groups as and when required and kill them off when no longer needed / run special events or whatever.

• Also talking to CUA - their big areas are AS/400 and systems management, which are both areas where GUIDE UK is not very active, so we are looking at working together on an informal basis.

• National Conference is in November in Bedfont Lakes - CUA also hold similar event. Looking at doing some sort of combined offering.

• Then Frank gave Phil a thank you present for all his work for this Group.

ODBA - Pete Sadler - IBM

• Pete described the ODBA method to access IMS DBs, which provides a callable interface to DL/1 from any address space in this MVS. It uses MVS OS/390 RRS, which in turn uses the MVS logger - see Pete's Version 6 Guide (SG24-2228) for details of what is needed for the MVS logger.

• If you're going to use AIB, then make the AIB space in your programs big (because they keep growing).

• One of the reasons that ODBA was built is that you could do DL/1 calls from DB2 stored procedures.

• It works with IMS DB/DC or DBCTL. Code is not available yet - currently going through internal Beta. Expect it to appear towards the end of the year.

• A copy of the foils was distributed.

DBCTL Implementation/Large Databases - Discussion Topic

• Pete reminded us that you do not need to install a separate DBCTL region if you have an IMS CTL region. An IMS CTL can provide DBCTL services to one or more CICS regions (the problem is that the documentation vaguely indicates that you can do this, and then singularly fails to tell you any more about it).

• Problem - having to do lots of IMSgens, and not prepared to pay for DELTA from BMC (nobody's perfect - Peter!). Would like IBM to supply this function rather than the unacceptable messy ONLINE CHANGE option provided.

• Console interface awkward.

• CSA requirements - CICS users not used to needing CSA.

• Lots of people have multiple systems with same DB names, and hence have difficulty combining into one DBCTL. Best way of doing this is to use exits to point at the right DBD/PSB rather than having to change all you programs. Code is available from Dougie's website. That solves online, but you are left with batch / image copy etc. If you want to use DBRC and register your DBs, you will have to rename the DBDs because DBRC requires unique DBD names. If you are not using DBRC, you could use any old name in batch jobs. This is one of the reasons that some people use COPE.

• If you use dynamic allocation, then JCL changes in batch are not so much of a problem. You can have your dynamic allocation blocks in a separate library - has to be authorised for online; not necessary for batch as you have the DSFRESLB DD card.

• A bit of good news - the code itself is stable and easy to install.

• WADS I/O rates are high and designed to be so (e.g. 1 per transaction on a high-speed device) - they should be on the same device type.

• Performance monitoring is a problem because some bits are in CICS and other bits in DBCTL. Discussion on when an IMS '07' record is cut (PSB termination) and how this ties together with SMF '110' record cut in CICS. Suggestion - go and look in Alan's Version 5 Performance Red Book, which Pete advertised this morning (should appear on the Greatest Hits CD soon). IMSASAP and IMSPARS work on DBCTL log and show you the IMS side of the house. Also look at the Performance Reporter MVS product for possible consolidation.

• Discussion on what CPU is used where, and whether things are being double counted or not. Yes, you are probably double counting if you are summing CICS and DBCTL. TMON is not a monitor for DBCTL. Ian will check with one customer, who has possibly done a breakdown of the accounting records to see if we can find out more.

• Question about CDBM and using it to issue commands - Dougie will send the code to anyone who wants to use it. Not all IMS commands execute synchronously (e.g. /DBR) so you have to check whether they have executed or not e.g. by issuing a test enq or looking in RECON for a DEALLOC or doing a /DIS.

AOB

• Thanks to everybody for coming - hope to see you at the next meeting. DBCTL meeting will be in November at Bedfont

• Please volunteer to present (or volunteer your colleagues).