COPYRIGHT (C) 1984-2021 MERRILL CONSULTANTS DALLAS TEXAS USA
MXG NEWSLETTER TWELVE
****************NEWSLETTER TWELVE***************************************
MXG NEWSLETTER NUMBER TWELVE MAY 1, 1988
Technical Newsletter for Users of MXG : Merrill's Expanded Guide to CPE
I. MXG SOFTWARE page 2
1. MXG Software Planning for 1988.
2. MXG Software default media will be 3480 cartridge.
3. Site licensing of MXG Software.
II. ANNOUNCEMENT OF MXG 6.2 PRERELEASE NOW AVAILABLE page 3
1.-18. Major enhancements in 6.2
III.TECHNICAL NOTES
1. HOT PTFs: MVS page 4
2. HOT PTFs: VM
3. Technical Notes, MVS
a. Merging TYPE21 and TYPE74 for Tape Mount duration
4. Technical Notes, VM page 5
5. Technical Notes, SAS
a. Eliminating tape mounts for SAS tape data libraries.
b. SAS ZAPS for 3380-K DASD Devices.
COPYRIGHT (C) 1988 BY MERRILL CONSULTANTS DALLAS TEXAS
MXG IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF MERRILL CONSULTANTS
I. MXG SOFTWARE
1. Planning for 1988.
The MXG 6.2 prerelease announced below will be shipped upon request. We
plan to ship MXG Production Version 6 to all customers in January, 1989.
We anticipate a 6.3 prerelease in the fall, supporting the DB2 type 102
SMF record and the FACOM operating system records. IBM has announced
ESA/370 and PR/SM in third and fourth quarter, and VM Release 6 as well
as VM/XA SP2 in the fourth quarter. Additional newsletters this year
will keep you informed of specific availabilities of prereleases.
2. MXG Software default media will be 3480 cartridge.
We are changing the default media on which we ship MXG Software from the
3420 (round) tapes to 3480 (square) cartridge tapes. If you have 3480's
you need do nothing. If you do not yet have 3480s, you MUST fill out
the enclosed postcard to get our software on round tapes. Not only are
the 3480s more reliable, much faster to build, easier to load, and hold
more data (200MB versus 13MB for 300 foot reels, 6.2 needs 173 feet),
they are actually cheaper too!
3. Site licensing of MXG Software.
The MXG software is licensed by physical site (eg., data center at a
single physical address). We charge one fee per site, independent of
the number of CPUs at that site. We do not check for CPU serials.
Additionally, you accepted these terms when you opened the software:
The MXG software in this package is to be used for analysis of data
CREATED only at the installation address at which licensed. The
use of this product at multiple sites, or for consulting, or as an
execution service (processing data created at a different site)
requires a special agreement with Merrill Consultants.
There is a discount on the MXG software for a second site license.
We included these definitions because in a very few sites, the people in
administration do not always keep you technicans informed of the site
licensing terms, and this might save you an extra phone call. If you
now realize you need a special agreement, please discuss with us. There
is usually no fee involved for these special agreements.
II. MXG VERSION 6.2 PRERELEASE NOW AVAILABLE
Prerelease 6.2 of MXG Software Version 6 is now available upon request.
Call us (or your local SAS office if outside North America) and we will
be happy to send this prerelease. The primary enhancements are these:
1. Support for VM/XA SP1 Monitor data. IBM has no VM MAP product; this
MXG support provides that function for VM/XA data records. This new
VM/XA Monitor creates many new data records in brand new format. The
CP MONITOR Command determines which domains, records, and which data
will be created in a DCSS. The new MONWRITE CMS command extracts the
data from the DCSS and writes the data to a CMS file which is read
directly by MXG to create the 75 VX...... data sets and their 1300+
variables from the 75 different Monitor records. IBM describes these
data records in the Appendix of SC23-0370-0. The IBM field names for
monitor data are of the form of dddrrr_ffffffff; ddd is the name of
the Domain and rrr is the name of the record type in that domain and
ffffffff is the field name. MXG creates data sets named VXdddrrr and
whose variables are named ffffffff, so that (finally) there will be
no transformation between IBM and MXG nomenclature! This is a major
new addition to MXG which has been validated at the data set level,
but which will have additional reporting and summarization added in
the near future. IBM's documentation will be found in:
LY27-8058 - Features Summary, pp 478-482
SC23-0353 - Administration, pp 137-145.
SC23-0370 - CP Programming Services, pp 145-149, pp 237-421.
LY27-8054 - CP Diagnostic Reference.
SC23-0354 - CMS Command Reference, pp 371-373.
SC23-0358 - CP Command Reference, pp 271-288.
The preliminary documentation of this major MXG enhancement is in
the comments in member VMACVMXA; new data sets, variables and their
lables are in member DOCVER. Complete Chapter 40-style documentation
be available with the production Version 6 shipment later.
2. Support for NPM 1.3 new type 28 SMF record. This record replaces the
type 38 (NPA/NPM), type 39 (NLDM) and VSAM VTAM Session statistics
(MXG's XNPMSESS) data sources. Twenty four new data sets are created
from TYPE28. All data sets now start with NPM..... and many variable
names were changed. Member VMAC28 cross-references these changes for
your reports.
3. IDMS 10.1 Performance Monitor enhancements.
4. IMS Log processing is validated and matches DFSILTA0 counting.
5. ANALDB2R DB2 reports now match DB2PM reports.
6. VM/Monitor validation with corrected state variable calculations and
enhanced summary reports that now match VM MAP numbers exactly.
7. MVS 2.2 cleanups and PTF support.
8. VPS (a SYSOUT handler) support in TYPE6 data set.
9. EXD (a SYSOUT handler) support in TYPE6 data set.
10. CA-DISPATCH (a SYSOUT handler) support in TYPE6 data set.
11. $AVRS (a SYSOUT handler) support in TYPESAVR data set.
12. Landmark Version 7.1 support.
13. CICS 1.7 UOWTIME variable decoded for the (undocumented) third data
format for both CMF and Landmark records.
14. EPILOG 1000 for CICS data records code now works.
15. Build of MONTHLY PDB with only one tape drive logic corrected.
16. Analysis of tape mount time from TYPE74 and TYPE21 data discussed.
17. Support for RMDS Release 3.0 SMF record.
18. ASMVMCOPY (assembly source) and REXXCOPY (an exec) permits a VM/SP
site to "dump" their VM/Monitor spool records to a CMS file. Without
this program, you either used VM MAPs MONTAPE/MONDISK command or you
used the SAS MONITOR INFILE exit to "dump" the VM/SP Monitor data.
All reported 5.5 problems have been fixed in this pre-release.
See the Change log and read the comments in the referenced MXG source
member for complete details of these enhancements and changes.
III. TECHNICAL NOTES
1. HOT PTFs: MVS
2. HOT PTFs: VM
3. Technical Notes: MVS
a. Merging TYPE21 and TYPE74 for Tape Mount duration.
TYPE74 contains total mount outstanding duration during the RMF
interval, and TYPE21 contains a record for each dismount event.
However, TYPE21 does not tell when the tape was actually mounted. We
can assign the dismount time as the mount time, then sum the mounts to a
reasonable time interval (an hour) and calculate an estimate of the
average mount time, AVGMNTTM, for each tape device for each system for
each hour (BY SYSTEM DEVNR HOUR).
New MXG member ANALMNTS (in MXG 6.2) estimates AVGMNTTM from 21s and
74s. Analysis shows that if the dismount counts from the 21 occur
exactly in the same RMF interval as the mount actually occurred, then
AVGMNTTM is exactly the mount time from MOUNT request to DEVICE READY.
While 95% of the hourly intervals AVGMNTTM showed nearly exact
comparisons (average mount times within fractions of a second), the
other 5% of hourly observations showed averages different by several
minutes! This is because you never know whether the dismount count was
in the same interval as the mount duration. Statistically, if the
number of dismounts during the interval is large, the average is more
likely to be correct, but it is still a very unpredictable average
value. If IBM adds mount count to the type 74 record, ANALMNTS would be
and exact measure of tape mount time.
AVGMNTTM was validated with the MXG ASMONTAP tape mount monitor program,
which creates a record for each mount event, tracking both the time of
mount, its duration, and the JOB READTIME causing that tape mount.
Unfortunately, while the ASMONTAP source code is on the MXG
library, it has not yet been modified to execute outside of its
home, where it exploits other local modifications at that site to
capture the JOB and READTIME information.
If you have TELEGENIX devices (a display unit on each tape drive that
displays VOLSER, etc.) it puts "RESET cuu" messages (one per SYSTEM) on
SYSLOG at the precise time of the DEVICE READY event. It should be
possible to match the correct RESET with the MOUNT message and measure
tape time from tape mount time from SYSLOG until ASMONTAP is modified.
(By the way, these multiple RESET messages, issued at one instant, but
time stamped on each SYSTEM, show the time of day clock differences
between CPUs!)
One analysis of tape mounts compared RMF, ASMONTAP, and SYSLOG for 3480
autoloaded scratch tapes. The minimum mount time was 20-30 seconds
(mount to ready) just for the autoload mechanical operations, with no
additional human delay. Furthermore, there were frequent mounts which
recorded an additional 20-30 seconds elapsed time after READY until the
IEC705 event (DISP=NEW tape label verification) was timestamped on
SYSLOG. This is an additional delay time to the job that can not be
measured in mount duration because the mount has already been satisfied.
4. Technical Notes: VM
5. Technical Notes: SAS
a. Correction to Newsletter ELEVEN elimination of tape mounts.
The algorighm in MONTHBLD and on page 10 of Newsletter ELEVEN which uses
the FILE MONTH statement requires the additon of DCB=TAPETEMP:
FILE MONTH MOD CLOSE=LEAVE DCB=TAPETEMP;
Without it, the tape is build using SAS' default DCB attributes for tape
data sets, which is RECFM=FB,LRECL=80,BLKSIZE=6400.
b. SAS ZAPS for 3380-K DASD Devices.
Z516.2120 Allows 3380-K's to contain SAS data sets with over 32000
tracks. (This was never possible before 3380-K's so it
is required only if you want to create a very large SAS
data set.) Note that this zap is a very big one and is
to be on the SAS 5.18 maintenance release and thus it is
recommended that you wait until then.
Z516.4669 Makes PROC CONTENTS aware of 3380-K's. See above.