Having just returned home from a busy conference season, it’s apparent that it’s becoming harder to generate revenue from new mainframe software sales. The commercial market sees this, and some vendors’ response is to raise software renewals at alarming rates.

We’ve heard tell of certain vendors raising rates at renewal by as much as 40%.

For those of you caught victim to this practice, DTS Software is here to say we are wholeheartedly against this way of doing business. We know the strain a significant renewal increase puts on your IT budget, and will never jack up our rates after you’ve come to rely on our products for your mission-critical business functions.

DTS has been in the business of mainframe software development for over 30 years, and all our software is still developed in-house by mainframers who have been in the industry for decades.

What’s more, because DTS uses 100% in-house development, our customer support team consists of the people who develop and use the software we sell to our customers every day. When you call DTS support, you get a qualified expert from our core team on the phone 100% of the time.

Because our developers are seasoned pros in the mainframe business, they’ve used (or helped build) the most popular mainframe software tools on the market and have developed a suite of DTS products that can replace software you may be currently using from one of our competitors.

We’ll put our products up against any of our competitors and are confident not only will they do the same thing your current software can do for less, but they also come with the customer support you won’t find anymore at our big-name competitors.

Take a look at the table below to see our current offering of products we’ve developed to replace software from the other vendors on the market.

Solution Replacement Options by Vendor

Broadcom/CA

BMC

Trident/IBM

All of these products install dynamically, without the need for SMP expertise, making installation and maintenance simple and easy. There is no complex “framework” – just a straightforward function. Both CA and BMC products require esoteric expertise in their complex architecture just to be able to do basic installation and maintenance tasks.

We care about making money, but we know that we only succeed when our customers do, which is why we have opted to make our replacement products affordable and easy to use, and with none of the unexpected price hikes you’ll see from larger corporations.

Connect with one of our team members today to talk about our suite of replacement products and see for yourself how easy and pain-free replacement and installation is with DTS.

The PARMLIB dataset is arguably the single most important dataset in a z/OS® enterprise. Controlling everything from system initialization, tailoring, catalog operations, and storage management to security, automation, console functions, and more, the PARMLIB concatenation is critical to z/OS functioning.

In a recent webinar, now available on-demand, DTS CTO Steve Pryor covers the importance of the SYS1.PARMLIB concatenation of datasets. Akin to where you’d find “init files” in the Linux and open-source worlds, but a bit more complicated in z/OS, there is a multitude of PARMLIB members that touch everything throughout the system.

While he couldn’t cover all 80+ members in a single session, Pryor takes a look at some of the most important members that affect system configuration (IEASYSxx, LOADxx,  PROGxx, IEASYMxx, IKJTSOxx) and storage management (ALLOCxx, DEVSUPxx, IGDSMSxx, and IGGCATxx). In addition to discussing the PARMLIB concatenation, Pryor also talks about filtering (to handle multiple systems) and the important console commands related to some of the PARMLIB members.

When you consider that each PARMLIB member can contain anywhere from one to several hundred parameters and statements, you get a sense of the amount of information that can be contained in SYS1.PARMLIB.

Where Does SYS1.PARMLIB Fit in the System?
The LOADxx member (usually LOAD00) starts everything off at IPL and resides within SYS1.PARMLIB or SYS1.IPLPARM. It can refer to as many as 16 partitioned datasets. The LOADxx member will contain the command to point to the SYS1.PARMLIB concatenation, although there is a SET LOAD command which allows you to switch to a different PARMLIB concatenation after the IPL has taken place.

Once the introduction groundwork is laid, Pryor dives into the nuances of SYS1.PARMLIB. He points out that, due to the lengthy history of SYS1.PARMLIB, you’ll often need to refer to the documentation for instruction on things like coding comments, continuations, where the end of the member is, etc. Because they differ from member to member, he also recommends caution when coding about continuation, comments, and about the end of the member.

Teaching by Example
The remainder of the webinar is dedicated to on-screen instruction. Pryor takes a look at LOADxx, IEASYSxx, IEASYMxx, a multitude of System Programming Members, and PROGxx and some of its associated statements. He then moves on to cover the most important Storage Management Members, Message Processing Members, and many more of the most important PARMLIB members.

The depth with which the topic is covered once again proves why Steve is one of the most respected experts in mainframe storage management today.

PARMLIB Reference Resources
If you need to find more reference material on SYS1.PARMLIB, Pryor once again provides information on key reference resources available for those who need it. Steve is also available via email to answer questions about this topic and can be reached at steve@dtssoftware.com.

Learn More in Our Webinar Available On-Demand
As with each of our monthly webinars, “SYS1.PARMLIB: What It Is, What’s Important, and Why?” is a 60-minute informative and educational look at an important topic in the mainframe space. It includes numerous examples, how-to guides, and references on where to find more information should you need it.

If you weren’t able to attend or would like to review the material presented, you can view it on-demand and download a copy of the slide deck by using this link. Be sure to join us each month for our complimentary webinar series. Go to www.dtssoftware.com/webinars for more information.