COPYRIGHT (C) 1984-2021 MERRILL CONSULTANTS DALLAS TEXAS USA
MXG NEWSLETTER TEN
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(3XMXG NEWSLETTER NUMBER TEN JUNE 30, 1987
Technical Newsletter for Users of MXG : Merrill's Expanded Guide to CPE
Contents: Page
I. Availability of the MXG Supplement
II. Availability of pre-release of MXG Software Version 5.1
III. Availability of the CPE Starter Set SAS/AF Application 3
IV. Technical Notes
1. HOT PTFs: MVS 4
2. HOT PTFs: VM 4
3. Technical Notes, MVS 4
4. Technical Notes, VM 6
5. Technical Notes, SAS 6
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
We are delighted to send this newsletter. We hope that the 600+ pages
of the Supplement compensates for the long time since our last MXG
Newsletter. As you can see from the enclosed list of changes and
enhancements, MXG is continuing to grow in scope and quality, thanks to
the many of you who supply us with requests, suggestions, and with code
and/or test data. We thank you all for your contributions. See Chapter
99 in the MXG Supplement.
We are children of the sixties, who know that just because we have the
keys to the kingdom, we do not have to charge what they are worth.
Barry and Judy Merrill
COPYRIGHT (C) 1987 BY MERRILL CONSULTANTS DALLAS TEXAS
MXG IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF MERRILL CONSULTANTS
(3XI. Availability of the MXG Supplement
MXG customers who were in good standing as of June 1, 1987, will receive
a free site copy of the MXG Supplement accompanying this
newsletter. (All such sites have previously received the three-ring
binder which holds the Supplement and our Newsletters).
The MXG Supplement is described on page 28 of the Second
Quarter 1987 issue of SAS Communications. The MXG Supplement is
over 600 pages, and preserves the 42-chapter structure of the
original guide for easy cross-reference. The Supplement describes all
the additional sources of data which have been added to MXG since the
MXG Book was published in 1984:
New Data Supported Enhancements
Bulk Data Transfer CICS 1.7 support and discussion
Cache RMF Reporter TSO/MON Release 5
DB2 Accounting and Statistics 3480 Tape counting
DISOSS Accounting Vector Facility Measurement
IDMS MXG Monitor SMF Records 3090 CPU Measures
IDMS (RTE) Performance Monitor Expanded Memory Tutorial
IMS Log Records MVS/XA IO measures (connect,
JES2 Spool Transfer Program disconnect, pending, etc.)
Landmark's The Monitor for CICS LCU queueing measures
MODEL204 Accounting and Response 3090 IOP measures
NPDA Type 37 SMF Record DOS/VSE Release 2 enhancements
NLDM Type 38 SMF Record PDB data sets documentation
RACF Type 80 SMF Record CMS installation instructions
ROSCOE Accounting and Response
VTAM Application Session Record
VM/Monitor
Additional copies of the MXG Supplement are now available for purchase
from the SAS Publications Department, or from your local SAS office. It
is our recommendation that each person who uses the MXG Software should
have both a copy of the MXG Book and the MXG Supplement.
(3XII. Availability of pre-release of MXG Software Version 5.1
We will send the production MXG Version 5 to every supported site in the
fall of this year. We cannot ship Version 5 until after MVS 2.2 and VM
Release 5 HPO are released by IBM and have been tested. Both products
have an announced planned availability of Third Quarter, 1987.
The enclosed list of changes permits you to update your MXG Version 4.4
prior to receipt of MXG Version 5. Read the change log carefully to see
if any of the impacting changes are required at your site.
We plan to make available a pre-release copy of MXG Version 5.1 in early
July, 1987, which contains all of these listed changes. We are still in
development of MXG Version 5, so you can expect significant additional
enhancements between this pre-release and the production version.
If you would like to install the pre-release of MXG Version 5.1, please
call (overseas sites must call their local office) and it will be sent
to you (at no cost) when it is available.
(3XIII. Availability of the CPE Starter Set SAS/AF Application
The CPE Starter Set is a SAS/AF application which is available FREE from
SAS Institute, Cary, N.C., or from your local SAS representative. It
was developed by Allan Russell of SAS Institute GmbH in Heidelberg.
SAS/AF gives end users (for example, your manager) the ability to plot,
analyze, select and apply the power of the SAS System to SAS data sets
through screens and menus which require no knowledge of the language.
The CPE Starter Set is both an example of how to use SAS/AF and a superb
set of hourly, daily and weekly reports of interest to managers and CPE
technicians alike. It contains a tutorial on its use, and generates a
wide range of reports from MXG data sets built from MVS (PDB data sets
JOBS, STEPS, RMFINTRV), and from VM (VMONPERF) data.
If you have the SAS/AF product installed, call and request the FREE copy
of the CPE Starter Set from your SAS sales representative, and tell them
you read about it in the MXG Newsletter.
(3XIV. TECHNICAL NOTES
1. HOT PTFs: MVS:
Overlay and loss of SMF records - many strange symptoms - fixed by PTF
UZ46460 and UZ48888-UZ48891. Critical, must be installed ASAP.
Incorrect SMF EXCP data, especially 30s, introduced by bad UZ45011,
fixed with UZ47837 (pre-reqs UZ47834-UZ47837 and UZ50314-UZ50316).
Noted loss of VSAM counts in type 30, was fixed by UZ47837.
Originally reported by MMA, complete loss of SMF data will occur with
DFP Versions 1.1.1, 1.1.2, or 2.1 if you have installed the PTFs for
APAR OZ96798, and you have NOT corrected the PTF-in-error condition
described by APAR OY02500. The SMF data loss condition is cause by a
problem in VSAM introduced by OZ96798 PTFs. Message IEE978E: SMF NOW
HAS nnnnn BUFFERS will be issued after the initial number of SMF buffers
are used up, but there is no other external indication that all SMF
records have been permanently lost.
Incorrect counting of some tape mounts in type 30 records. After the
installation of UZ50959, tape mounts issued with message IEC501E (Look
ahead mount message) are not counted. Mounts with messages IEC501A or
IEC233A continue to be correctly counted. APAR OZ97886 describes the
problem, accepted by APAR OZ97617 which has the fix. The problem
primarily affected multiple volume mounts; only the first volume mount
was counted in the type 30.
For 3090-400s, 300s, and 600s with 128MB real memory, there are lots of
performance problems if you do not install OY0185. Your CE should have
caught this one for you.
2. HOT PTFs: VM:
Concatenated MACLIBs on different mini-disks will fail; only the first
MACLIB in the concatenation will be searched until PTF VM24283 is
installed. As long as the MACLIBs are on the same mini-disk, there is
no problem with concatenation (as suggested for the MXG SOURCLIB and
USERID SOURCLIB libraries).
3. Technical Notes, MVS:
CICS CMF record blocksize is set by the JCT BUFSIZE parameter, and
typically is only 6000, which should be increased to half-track on 3380s
to reduce IO counts and CPU overhead in building CMF records.
NPM may produce negative square root when calculating standard
deviation, since the SSQ field can wrap in the NCP.
Counting of tape drives (TYPE30_4 or PDB.STEPS variables TAPEDRVS,
TAPE3420 and/or TAPE3480) is affected if the job step dynamically
allocates tape drives. For example, DB2MSTR dynamically allocates a
drive every time the recovery data is backed up. This can create a step
record for DB2MSTR with a different UCB address for each dynamic
allocation, which MXG would sum as a large number of tape drives.
DMS/OS has similar jobs which dynamically allocate tape drives too.
There is no fix, but before processing PDB.STEPS with ANALTAPE, examine
step with large value for TAPEDRVS and if you recognize that the job
step dynamically allocates tapes, exclude that job step (by job name,
step name, and program name) from the analysis. Otherwise, it will
appear the job step had all those tapes for the entire time the step
executed.
Tape mounts in TYPE30_4 and PDB.STEPS does not include mounts issued by
JES3 for MDS mounts; they are counted in the JES3 Type 25 record.
Steps which mount a tape, and then RETAIN, will show zero mounts for the
subsequent step. If you want to identify steps which actually use tape
in any step, the EXCPTAPE and IOTMTAPE are much better indicators of
actual usage.
It is observed that the IO interrupt count reported in the TYPE70 (and
on the RMF CPU report) is always greater than the IO activity rate in
the TYPE78IO (and on the RMF LCU report), typically by 5-7%. This may
be a useful measure, if we knew what causes I/O interrupts to exceed I/O
activity. Any thoughts?
UCC7 can cause invalid READTIME error messages. There are two options
for UCC7 to identify jobs which are under its control. By default, the
eighth byte of JMRUSEID (the 'User identification field', MXG variable
LOCLINFO) is used. The UCC7 installer can choose any other byte of the
JMRUSEID if other products use the eighth. If all eight bytes are used
by other products, UCC7 will optionally store its flag in the first byte
of the Job Reader Date field. The normal value stored is a 'EE'X, but
if NCF is also installed, the field can take on almost any value. When
the Job Reader Date field is used, UCC7 traps each SMF record as its
being written and clears out the high order byte. Unfortunately, the
trap uses a table of SMF record IDs, and records which UCC7 does not
know about (such as the type 60, 61, 65, 66, 78, 80 and all user records
such as ACF2) are passed into the SMF file with an invalid reader date.
The result is a missing value for READTIME for these UCC7 controlled job
records. Pages 2 and 9 of the UCC7 Installation Guide discuss these
options, and UCCEL technical support has the fix for the 60's and 80
records, as well as advice for handling user SMF records. If the record
has the Reader Date in the "standard" location (bytes 27-30), the fix is
simply to add the record ID to ICMDSECT. For records with relocatable
format (like the type 78 record which can record a specific job's
virtual storage), more complicated instructions are available from
UCCEL. Since MVS 2.2 will use the first byte of the date field for
dates in the next millenium, UCC7 designers are looking for an
alternative.
4. Technical Notes, VM:
VM will not create VBS records. If you install MXG under CMS to read
SMF data, you cannot build the SMFSMALL data set described in the
installation instructions. Change the Filedef and the FILE statement in
UTILGETM to build the SMFSMALL file with RECFM=VB,LRECL=32756, and
BLKSIZE=32760 on a 3380 disk and the program will work. Yes, it will
not make efficient use of the disk space, but SMFSMALL is only a small
test file of SMF data. VM is capable of reading VBS input tapes, so you
should have no problem processing SMF under CMS.
There are two ways to hold SPOOL data in VM so that it exists after the
spool data is read:
SPOOL READER HOLD holds the reader
CHANGE READER nnn HOLD holds the file
Hold only the reader, never hold the file, if you want the data to be
read. The CMS Diagnose 14 Subtype 1C command which is used to read the
monitor data in the spool skips over held files.
5. Technical Notes, SAS:
SAS Options which you should be aware of.
TAPECLOSE=LEAVE should be specified on the EXEC card for MONTHBLD.
It leaves the input tapes as they are, and prevents
lots of rewinds (and mounts, for multi-volume input).
The SAS default is REWIND.
FREE=CLOSE either as a SAS option or on a DD card in a SAS job
interferes with the IBM STIMER routine, which is used
to measure SAS step CPU time. FREE=CLOSE has caused
unpredictable USER 999 ABENDs with the SAS error
message CPU TIME EXCEEDED and a large value of CPU
time shown on the SAS log. The value on the log is
wrong (see the Step Termination message to confirm)
but the STIMER poped and SAS shut the step down.
Either do not use FREE=CLOSE, or use the SAS NOSTIMER
option, which eliminates the problem, but will also
eliminate the CPU used message on the SAS log.
NOMEMFILL Should always be specified, MEMFILL is a SAS debug
developers option which should never be used, as it
causes a seven-fold increase in CPU time.
(3XV. CHANGES INSTALLED TO VERSION 4.4
The following changes have been made to the MXG 4.4 Library. All of
these changes will already be in MXG Version 5 when you receive it.
Some of the changes provide the code with line numbers so that you can
install the change. Lines to be inserted have a period after the line
number they are to be inserted after. Existing lines which need to be
changed have no period in their line number.