Category: Cheryl’s List

Hello All, We’re sure that you have heard about the security exposure in the Log4j Java package?  It has been described as “Could be the most serious security threat ever seen”.  While the media occasionally exaggerate things, this is one that everyone should be aware of – it potentially affects everything from the biggest mainframe...

Subscribers to Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter can find the latest 121-page issue, 2021 No. 3, on our publications website (https://watsonwalkerpublications.com/).  The last quarter has been really hectic on many fronts – IBM released the formal announcement of z/OS 2.5, details about the chip in IBM’s next mainframe were discussed at the Hot Chips conference, we’ve...

If you've been working from home and haven't made it into the office, you might not have seen the August 24 snail mail from IBM announcing a price increase of 5% on MLC (Monthly License Charge) prices. We want to bring this up because many people are completing their budgeting process for 2022, and they...

Watson & Walker, the mainframe industry's leading independent performance consultants, are delighted to announce our latest software product, the Watson & Walker Application Profiler for Z (AP4Z). Are you a performance analyst, frustrated by seeing a generic program name (with no indication of what program is actually being executed) when you use SMF type 30...

This year’s Summer SHARE conference will once again be held as a virtual event. Access to pre-recorded ‘on-demand’ sessions was provided to registered ‘attendees’ starting last Monday (August 2nd), with the live sessions starting next Monday (August 9th).  You can find the impressive list of on-demand sessions here.  And the Technical Agenda is available here. ...

We just published the latest 153-page issue of Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter, available to subscribers on our publications site. As usual, we aimed to have a mix of articles, with some covering important upcoming changes in z/OS 2.5, and others getting into more detail about functions that have been with us for a while, but...

Subscribers to Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter can find the 149-page Cheryl Watson's Tuning Letter, 2021 No. 1, issue on our publications website (https://watsonwalkerpublications.com/).  The last quarter has been an action-packed one, so regardless of which group you work in, we believe that you'll find information in this issue to make your job a little easier...

Here at Watson & Walker we love SMF data.  And judging by the volumes of it that most z/OS sites generate, we are not the only ones.  SMF can tell you just about anything you could want to know about what is happening on your systems.  The downside of having that vast sea of information...

In case you have missed it, effective April 30, 2021, IBM is removing support for TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 from its software download servers, and all connection attempts after that date will have to use TLS 1.2. If you currently download files using HTTPS, then you should not be affected.  However, if you use...

In this crazy world in which we find ourselves, it is easy to lose track of familiar milestones - for example, the annual SHARE Winter conference.  If you haven't been keeping abreast of developments in SHARE, there are a lot of things about this year's Winter SHARE that you should be aware of: It starts...