Messages

1981

OD/WEK & JAVA API / Re: Encryption when communicating to CMOD 8.3 z/OS with ODWEK

« on: December 09, 2008, 03:49:46 AM »

Hi Lorelei.

You're not the first, and certainly won't be the last to ask for encryption of CMOD sessions between clients and servers.  I've asked IBM to implement SSL for CMOD, and the answer in general terms is that the impact to server performance is too high.

I haven't been privy to the solutions implemented, but my first guess is that implementing ODWEK on the same server instance as CMOD gets you half of the way there, since the back-end requests don't have to go over a physical network.

For what it's worth, the data that CMOD whizzes back and forth is in a proprietary compressed format.  Obscurity isn't security, but it's another barrier that will keep casual eavesdroppers from reading data in transit.

-JD.

1982

MP Server / Re: Bulk Print of all Reports for a Given Folder or Folders

« on: September 26, 2008, 04:59:41 AM »

Step 1:  Drag that lawyer, kicking and screaming, into the late 1980's, by showing him what we call a 'computer'.   

Step 2:  Search for the documents you want to print in the CMOD Thick Client, and once they're in the hit list, then select the items you want to print, then click the 'Print All Selected' button to the right.

If your company is licensed for Adobe Acrobat, you might be able to spare a forest of trees and create PDFs that you could send on a CD.  I think the more modern versions of the PDF specification allow for rediculously large files with hundred of thousands of pages, if not millions.

-JD.

1983

z/OS Server / Re: Storage Set exit?

« on: September 12, 2008, 02:42:27 PM »

In the multiplatforms world, you add more cache filesystems, or assign additional storage inside TSM.  In TSM, this can mean adding volumes to a storagepool, or adding a new one and configuring it in TSM's hierarchy.

1984

General / Re: Ecryption for CPNI Data - Has Anyone done so in z/OS Environment?

« on: August 14, 2008, 06:55:01 AM »

Hi.

In the multiplatforms world, I've used OpenSSH (speficially SFTP or SCP) to copy data from one location to another with strong authentication *and* encryption.

Similar tools should be available for z/OS.

-JD.

1985

z/OS Server / Re: ARSXML PROBLEM

« on: August 09, 2008, 06:52:25 AM »

Yes, please!  You can't tell us you fixed it, but not tell us how! 

-JD.

1986

Report Indexing / Re: Why not have DATE as an Index field?

« on: July 26, 2008, 06:46:04 AM »

Hi Bill.

Indexes are best used for fields that are 'mostly unique' -- like a customer account number.

The great thing about the most recent versions of CMOD is that you can turn indexing on or off at any time.  So, while I would normally recommend indexing date fields, you can try running queries with it on or off and compare response times.  Just be forewarned that if your App Group has a lot of documents, building the index is non-trivial, and can take a considerable amount of time depending on your CPU speed and IO bandwidth.

Hope this helps!

-JD.

1987

z/OS Server / Re: Generic indexer and using -G to get AG name from file not working

« on: April 18, 2008, 04:32:47 AM »

Hi Bill.

Can you paste in the exact command or JCL that is running arsload?  That'll help us diagnose the problem a little better.

Also, which version of CMOD are you using?

-JD.

1988

MP Server / Re: How Do I Migrate Indices & Objects

« on: February 22, 2008, 07:55:12 AM »

Hi JJeffrey...

Once an Application Group is designated Cache Only, there's no quick and clever way to change the Storage Set to another type (there's good reason for this, which I won't get into now).

SteveC:

I know that things are vastly different on the Z/Series systems, but I don't think what you're suggesting will work either.  Without somewhere to PUT the new data (as defined by the storage set), the migration can't work.

Steve is correct -- that creating Application Groups as cache only *is* very short-sighted -- it's bitten more than a few of my customers over the years.  None of the options are particularly palatable, but here they are...

1)  Extract & Reload into a new Application Group.  It's time consuming, if nothing else, and you need a big pool of disk for it to work properly.

2)  Create a new AG with secondary storage defined, then migrate the old AG into a THIRD Application Group, and tie the two AG's together at the folder level.  This has performance implications.

3)  Keep adding disk.  Chart out your growth and see if this is doable.  Depending on what your secondary storage media is, this might even be economical.  Just make sure the disk is heavily protected with RAID disk and/or regular backups.

Don't hesitate to give me a call to talk about your specific situation.

1989

MP Server / Re: Unload Multiple Load ID's

« on: January 18, 2008, 09:17:52 AM »

Hi.  =)

It sounds like you're on Windows.  I'm not much of a Windows guru, but doing this in UNIX is rather straightforward -- maybe you can convert my ideas into a usable batch file -- of course, it would be great if you could share your results with the group too...

If you have a text file, which contains a list of OnDemand Load ID's, one per line, you would use the following script in UNIX's Korn Shell (ksh) or Bourne Again Shell (bash):

for i in `cat load-id-file`
do
  arsadmin unload -h hostname -u userid -p password -L $i
done

UNIX Shell scripting has a few conventions you might not be familiar with...

for is a looping structure.
` (backtick) characters execute the command within them
cat is analogous to Windows' 'type' command.
do and done enclose a loop.

If this is helpful, I'm sure the rest of the users would be interested to see what you come up with.

1990

MP Server / Snaplock with OnDemand & TSM?

« on: November 26, 2007, 03:07:31 PM »

I've been approached about implementing OnDemand with NetApp's 'SnapLock' product, which provides WORM (Write-Once Read-Many) functionality to SAN disk...  My initial response was that DR550 and Centera are the preferred WORM Disk solutions...

Is anyone using SnapLock in Production with OnDemand?  I'd be curious to hear about your experiences.

Thanks in advance...

-JD.

1991

OD/WEK & JAVA API / Re: Connecting to an OnDemand Server using ODWEK Java API

« on: April 18, 2007, 09:06:28 AM »

The error message "The server failed while attempting to convert data" implies (at least, to me) that a document transform/translation failed.  Are you converting the document stored in OnDemand into another format?  Is that portion of the code working properly?

-JD.