“Find out what’s needed. If you don’t use it, get rid of it”- still clichés in today’s computer budget meetings. With P-Tracker you have a software monitoring tool for z/OS mainframe systems that not only tells you which software products and inhouse modules have been truly accessed but how much they’re being used and by whom.

P-Tracker will ensure every module of every product and application you identify to it is monitored for usage on your z/OS system and sub-systems (CICS, IMS, ..). And you’ll know who’s using it. Knowing which modules are used means you know which features are used in your current systems, and which systems are obsolete.

If your job is to continue to reduce mainframe software costs at your organization, or look at options regarding system replacement costs, then P-Tracker automates the delivery of the current usage information you need to be in charge of negotiations:

• P-Tracker detects and identifies software products your installation isn’t using anymore, so you can cancel rental or maintenance on them, and cease supporting them.
• P-Tracker identifies the users of lightly used products, so you can find out if their software needs can be met in other ways.
• P-Tracker helps you find software that’s installed on the wrong system, so that you can remove it.
• P-Tracker finds all modules that are used to ensure that you will convert the right modules and features when migrating to new systems

We hope you find this product covers all areas required by your own internal review/audit. Should you or any of your staff have any queries please do not hesitate to contact us.

To learn more about P Tracker benefits, request your product demo or order a trial evaluation. See panel to your right for more information and product links.

ULT4DB2 – Superior Reporting ULT4DB2 Reports honour arbitrary grouping, i. e. users may specify any combination of the following variables to group and filter the report data: User ID, Plan, Logical Unit of Work, Unit of Recovery, Database, Tablespace, Table. Selection Patterns as well as Start and End Log Scan time are displayed in the report header. The user may also specify the report title.

Example REPORT “My Report” GROUP BY ( USER , PLAN , LUW , UR , DATABASE , TABLESPACE ) PLAN Q* A* C* D* U* W* K* DATABASE S86*;

ULT4DB2 is known as an easy to use Log Analysis and Log Tracking Tool for DB2 z/OS. It is equally suitable for Data Propagation to other systems or platforms, for Auditing and for Data Correction.

Database administration, application development and maintenance programmers use ULT4DB2 to repair the result of an incorrect program execution, a wrongly scheduled job or other user errors. Auditors and administrators deploy ULT4DB2 to determine update sequences. Data centers replace expensive data propagator tools because ULT4DB2 offers reduced CPU consumption and reasonable license conditions. Database administrators use ULT4DB2 to analyze update frequencies and idle times.

ULT4DB2 provides a user friendly ISPF interface to make life easy. Different types of users (DBAs, auditors, system and application programmers) can use this flexible tool for a wide range of functions.

ULT4DB2 makes dealing with one or hundreds of tables a simple procedure. It provides a number of flexible functions to select and treat many objects simultaneously. Intuitive templates make enforcing naming standards an error free task.

To learn more about ULT4DB2 benefits request your product demo or order a free trial.

Speedup BACKUP and RECOVERY
The problem: A bank wanted to start taking image copies on DASD to speed up backup and recovery and to allow mirroring to a recovery site. The DASD pool was too small for daily full backups of the entire DB2 subsystem.
The solution: The bank is using TUC to automate daily backups. Only tables that have been changed are copied. TUC decides if a full copy is necessary based on the rate of changes. TUC helped the bank to identify that, in certain workloads, only a few tables were changed. This way the backup time and the space required for backups were dramatically reduced. Only 6% of the total number of tables actually needed backup. Thus the backup process now only takes 20 minutes.

Optimize REORG
The problem: A bank wanted to be proactive and to identify performance and space problems before they became prominent to users and REORG only the most critical objects without exceeding a limited batch window. Furthermore they wanted to improve performance when accessing large history tables by archiving data that is not in use.
The solution: The bank is using TUC to automate REORGs for a quota of megabytes only for the tables in the most critical condition. TUC collects access performance statistics and can identify if there is a degradation in access performance over time. Unnecessary REORG is avoided, if tables do not suffer from any performance degradation. The bank is using TUC to prune history data by automating REORG DISCARD. The business applications define the conditions for archiving history data. TUC allows recalling archived data or reloading the archived data into history repository. This way the bank is able to decrease the size of large critical tables and improve the access performance to these tables. Backups for smaller tables are also faster. They are able to reduce their REORG process by 30%. more»

“We need to refresh the test bed data more often but can’t do it in timely and cost effective manner”.

Does this sounds familiar?

Change is unavoidable, but the reasons to push it further into the future are plentiful. There are many obstacles to overcome in making more frequent test data refreshes. Many shops now run 24×7, or pretty close to that, so obtaining consistent data is almost impossible. Copying tables when the data structures of the source and the target are different is a laborious task. Using image copies introduces its own set of limitations. Even seemingly trivial subset selects can require manual intervention and be error prone. Many organizations have implemented strict sensitive data masking policies that must be observed while refreshing test data. The security that surrounds production makes extracting data for test beds lengthy and time consuming. In addition to these technical issues, IT must address the high cost of long running UNLOAD/LOAD jobs.

Here is a top ten list of suggestions for reducing the anxiety, time and cost of refreshing test data.

TUC is known as the tool that simplifies DB2 object maintenance. It is equally suitable for the automation of backups, reorgs, statistics collections as for one-time tasks like the recovery or repair of corrupted user tables. Real Time Statistics and thresholds are used to trigger utilities only when needed. TUC identifies any new object and refreshes the maintenance jobs automatically. Customization options allow the administrator to easily control utilities, objects and resources.

We are pleased to announce General Availability of TUC z/OS V2 R2, some highlights:

• Full support for DB2 version 9 and version 10 new features, such as clone tables, partition by growth tablespaces, flashcopy image copies and RUNSTATS profiles.
• Collects access performance counters and can avoid unnecessary reorgs if IO remain optimal.
• Automates the process of continuous monitoring of the log and can generate ULT log analysis jobs. TUC dialogs allows you to display application activity for each objects, and to easily generate recover jobs to the desired point in time. The activity data includes also points of no activity also known as Quiet Points.
• Offers improvements in processing utilities and allows you to process objects by priority, process only indexes and process objects based on a quota of megabytes.
• Allows better integration of utility jobs and application processes. Utility jobs can be triggered synchronously and pending utility requests can be processed continuously.
• Generation and refresh of profiles, jobs and utility statements has been simplified and improvements in performance have been introduced to allow TUC users to quickly generate utility jobs for a large number of objects/databases.

As a database administrator for DB2 for z/OS the pace of change on the DB2 z/OS platform makes your work easier in some ways, more complex in others. Expectations continue to rise and data volumes increase, while batch windows shrink and service level agreements get more scrutiny. Plus there is the persistent pressure to reduce costs and deliver gains more quickly. more»