STRONGblog

Notes from twenty years in the field

Working notes from real z/OS engagements — Endevor-to-Git migrations, DBB builds, IDz performance, code pages, and mainframe CI/CD. The same knowledge we bring to yours.

End of service for AIX 5.2 and i/OS 5.3

For those customers who have not seen this, its time to upgrade. If you don’t upgrade you will find you won’t get the software support you need for applications running on these OS versions. Calling IBM support and getting PMR is hard enough, don’t let this become an obstacle in the future. IBM Global Technology … Read more

WebSphere App Server fix pack 7.0.0.3 is out

For those who are running WAS 7, IBM released the latest fixpack yeserday (March 24th). This is a highly recommended fix. You can get the fix from IBM’s FTP site. This is the easiest way as you don’t have to rat through their support web site. For Windows 32 bit (about half of you out … Read more

Calculating the Absolute Cursor Position in HATS

In IBM Rational’s HATS product, you will often see reference to the cursor position, or absolute cursor position. The simple cursor position is simply the row (comma) column number: i.e. 4,67. The absolute cursor position is a single number that is a calculation of the row and position. The formula is as follows: [(actual rows-1) … Read more

VMWare Server 2.0 …. very nice

I’ve been running VMware on my openSuse box for several months now. It has been rock solid and reasonably easy to use. This week, I took the liberty of upgrading to VMWare server 2.0. WOW! What a difference! The new console is SOOOO much better. I was able to move my old WinXP laptop to … Read more

Penguins, Tigers, and Leopards, oh my!

I’ve taken notice of the number of Macs at this year’s LotusSphere conference. Lots of IBM’ers now have them as well as customers and partners. Several presenters were switching between their Mac desktop and their Windoze virtual machines. Another nicety is the strong presence of Canonical and Ubuntu here. There is such an irony in … Read more