Ways to Improve Resilience

You'll be happy to know that we have put our obsession with VSAM on hold this edition, and decided to talk about something (anything) else. Our lives seem to have been consumed with resilience over the past couple of months, so that seems like a good topic to talk about.

In the past couple of years, we've been asked more and more to look at resilience: as an 'add on' for other projects, or projects in thier own right. So in our first technical article, we're going to talk about how we approach this: how as external consultants do we do a quick resilience check? In our second article, we look at space errors (OK, VSAM did creep in a little here), and propose some ways to eliminate space abends and errors

In our opinion article, we suggest that allowing application programmers to 'patrol' their applications will make these applications more resilient.

We hope you enjoy this issue.

technical: Adventures with Resilience: Looking at Resilience As An External Consultant

In the past few years, I've been asked more regularly by clients to look for ways to improve resilience. Often this isn't a primary goal of the project, but added on. In some cases, the entire project has been to improve resilience.

So how do I, as an external consultant, look for resilience issues in a client site?

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technical: Let's Just Agree to Stop All Space Errors

At a client site recently, we had a production outage caused by a VSAM space issue. And it wasn't the first time.

When I first started as a systems programmer, space related abends were common. However, IBM and other vendors have been spending a lot of time creating ways of reducing these abends. In fact, I believe that space related errors should never, ever occur. But they still do.

So, how can we 100% eliminate B37, D37, E37 abends and other space-related failures?

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opinion: Can Patrolling of Source Code Improve Resilience?

I run for the physical and emotional benefits: I'm fitter and less stressed. But there's another interesting benefit of running in the cold: I'm no longer afraid of it. I wear less clothes than I used to, and have no problems going out. No longer do I think "do I really need to go out and get milk, or can I survive without it a little longer." I just go and get the milk.

I believe that this is the same for any area, including computing. Let's take an example - something I've seen a few times. Suppose we have a module that is essential to our application: MODA. If MODA is regularly modified and maintained, then the teams supporting it will be familiar and comfortable with it. They will understand how it works, and quickly identify problems that related to it. If there are problems, they can be quickly fixed. If a change to MODA is needed, it is scheduled and done.

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