Redbook 9/25

Successfully exposed IMS transaction through the IMS SOAP gateway. Started doumenting the chapter.

Quotable Quote:Work is an expression of who you are. So who you are is what needs to be worked out- Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev

Redbooks 9/24

The IMS Transaction expose as Web service scenario. DB2 UDF consuming DB2 web service.

Quotable Quote: Never take seriously what people say they think, because people are never sure. Trust only action.

Redbooks 9/20

Multiple updates to the DB2 chapter, based on feedback from the expert team.

Quotable Quote: No one can do everything .But every one can do something.

Hilarious snippet from a previously published redbook

I was reading through an existing redbooks and found this funny snippet. Laughed the world out for 5 minutes...

At the time this book was written we were also able to uncover an unexpected error on this panel. When including the licensing jar we should receive a cryptic error if this jar did not appear first on the class location field. This error can be seen in Figure 2-15, and occurs when the db2jcc.jar is first in the path and the Connect to Database button is clicked.

Quotable Quote: "Most of the things in life are simple and only the wise understand them" - Paulo Coelho

NYC trip photos

Quotable Quote: "Two roads diverged in the wood And I took the one less traveled by And that has made all the difference” - From a Poem by Robert Frost.

Redbooks residency:Day 15:Monday September 17

Today is all documentation. Capturing all the information and tasks accomplished in the last 5 days. Created 20 pages of material for this new chapter.

Quotable Quote:If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” Dr. Wayne Dyer.

Redbooks residency:Day 14:Sunday September 16

Success. After all the hard work last week, we finally got the CICS Webservice requester working. The main issue that had bogged us down last week was the response data structure being too complex for the tooling to create a comparable COBOL data structure. Having accomplished this, feels really good. Taking the break to go to NYC yesterday had also helped. Plan for tomorrow, start the documentation and typing in the redbooks work.

Quotable Quote:“Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration". Thomas Alva Edison

Redbooks residency:Day 12:Friday September 14

Continued work on the CICS requester. It was late in the day, we discovered that the tooling to convert WSDL response object with two levels of complex types inside it, cannot create a working COBOL structure. Next plan : change WSDL to have only simple types and try. Scheduled this for Sunday. Tommorow is trip to NYC.

Quotable Quote: "Experience is not what happens to a person; it is what a person does with what has happened to him/her."

Redbooks residency:Day 11:Thursday September 13

What a day in terms of legacy technology learning dump. While continuing on this CICS requester as a web service scenario, lets enumerate the new technologies I got exposed to:

1. COBOL requester program ( main entry point) to invoke the web service ( Generated by the web service tooling, but had to learn how to modify some key pieces of code to do error handling and populating the request)
2. Another COBOL program that works with BMS map ( a screen map), that would capture the input for the web service request and output values from Web service.
3. Comm area ( the communication area between these two programs).
4. How to create a JCL ( Job card language to compile and link these two programs)
5. Specify where to place these load libs, so CICS knows how to pick it up.
6. Define and install CICS programs that would reference artifacts created in steps 1 and 2.
7. Define and install CICS transaction, that references 1.
8. Define and install Web service pipeline for the requester

Are we there yet... no not yet, hopefully by End of Day tomorrow, we can get this going, but hey from knowing nothing to something, that feels good.

Quotable Quote:Ability is what you are capable of doing, motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it. - Lou Holtz.

Redbooks residency:Day 9:Wednesday September 12

The next scenario we have to work on is to make a Webservice call from CICS. The documentation is very sparse on this. There is heavy documentation on exposing a CICS transaction as a webservice, but not much on CICS transaction being a requester. Luckily, Ron has one through some presentations on this and so we have some leads to start with.

Quotable Quote: “Change before you have to” - Jack Welch, the chief architect of GE’s transformation (1980-99)

Ways to avoid risk in designing solutions

Obviously, you can choose a solution that avoids risk altogether :-). Code the “hard” parts of the applications first so you can identify the areas of greatest risk when you still have time to re-design and avoid risky solutions.

Quotable Quote: "It is one of the beautiful compensations of life, that no man can sincerely help another without helping himself." - Ralph Waldo Emerson. Put into other words "Reach out and touch some one. “Most important business relationships are personal ones.”

Redbooks residency:Day 8:Tuesday September 11

Successfully deployed stored procedure and created a new operation in the webservice and executed it. Added materials for more pages to the chapter. Around 10 AM, we got this announcement on PA to observe a moment of silence for victims of 9/11. Don't recall hearing such an announcement at Wachovia PA anytime.

Quotable Quote: "If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten"

Redbooks residency:Day 7:Monday September 10

Still couldn't deploy the stored procedure. Authored 22 more pages for this 2nd chapter. It is amazing at the amount of time it takes to gather and write out these technical materials.

Quotable Quote: “What you are is God’s gift to you; what you become is your gift to God.” -Andre Agassi

Redbooks residency:Day 6:Sunday September 9

Taking a weekend break. With recommendation from the hotel front desk, myself and Mario decided to hike in Locust grove, Samuel Morse Historic Website http://www.morsehistoricsite.org/. The Morse code founder lived in there. Nice trail with scenic views into the Hudson river which BTW is deep and wide enough to support ocean liners up to Albany in the north. Looking forward to watch the US open final between Federer and Djkovic this evening.

Scenic Hudson river with train tracks skirting it.Beautiful trail
Samuel Morse house.

Quotable Quote: Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm - Churchill.

Redbooks residency:Day 5:Saturday September 8

Cleared out all Wachovia e-mails. Successfully created the stored procedure but couldn't deploy on DB2 z/os. Will have to wait till Monday to get support on this. Authored 3 pages of the chapter giving a sense of accomplishment.

Redbooks residency:Day 4:September 7

Successfully used the BETA product (The next generation IBM data developer for Web services ) to expose a DB2 table sql as webservice. You can download at:
https://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/iwm/web/reg/download.do?source=swg-vd95ob&S_PKG=swg-vd95ob&S_TACT=Developer
Tested the deployed webservices. (REST bindings with the web browser and SOAP bindings through the built in IBM Webservice Testing wizard).
Target for tomorrow:Build and deploy a stored procedure and expose it as webservice.

Quotable Quote: "When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back.” - Paulo Coelho

Redbooks residency:Day 3:September 6

Kept going in a direction leading to some dead ends. Realized that product supporting webservices between WAS and DB2 is really a beta product. Redbooks are not meant to illustrate beta products, but since this product is available in a public website, it is OK to document this in the Redbooks. The demo illustrating exposure of DB2 stored procedure and table data as Webservice with SOAP and REST bindings was really cool though.

Quotable Quote: Doing things right is always good, but what matters most is doing the right things right.

Redbooks residency:Day 2:September 5.

The last redbooks resident "Ron Townsend" came on board today. He flew in from Indianapolis. He had given a proof of technology for Wachovia for the printing solutions replacement system, and worked with David Weddle and Jerry Sienkewiz (Coincidence or what).
Framemaker/Writing English class (9:30-12:30). The instructor gave some background on "Kill" names for places around here ( Fishkill/Catskill ). It is terminology for Streams. Asked us to be wary of black bears,deers,chipmunks and poison ivy when doing outdoor activity. The lunch at IBM cafeteria was not much different from yesterday, it is turning out to be more monotonous.
The redbook may be titled: Integrating back-end systems through websphere using webservices.
Finalised the scenarios for the redbook. Topics covered could include:
1. WAS to CICS inbound/outbound with MQ and HHTP transport.
2. DB2 V9 (Viper client) Webservices between WAS and DB2. (Stored procedure and dynamic SQL)
3. WAS to IMS ( MFS based webservices and SOAP IMS gateway)
4. WAS to WAS ( WMQ,SIB, ESB....)
I am teamed to work with Ronald on 2 and 3. Sergio and Mario to work on 3 and 4.
Alex mentioned that he will be out for 2 weeks giving seminars and workshops in B'lore and Chennai,India. Came to know that his India trip was planned 2 months in advance. Beats me as to why he would schedule himself as a residency lead with such a conflict ( Bad planning???)

Quotable Quote: "What you did yesterday is history. What you promise for tomorrow is mystery. What you can deliver today is reality." - Anand P. Shah.

Redbooks residency:Day 1:September 4.

Checked into Residence Inn yesterday. Nice room with kitchen and seperated bedroom. Homely atmosphere and everything looked new ( probably newly remodelled room).
Morning breakfast ( Buffett) is free and had quite a good varietyof food. Drove to IBM site at which is behind the inn. Finished with Security and badging. Met two other residents from Sao Paulo, and Brazillia, Brazil ( Mario and Sergio ). It was a 11 hour flight for them from Brazil to US. Mario is IBM level 2 support for Banque De Brazil. Sergio was not really good in english.
Met with the residency leader Alex and Mike. Had lunch at the IBM cafeteria. The residency format is going to be fairly open and flexible which is nice that we are not really going to be constrained.
2 pm Orientation: Our residency leader Alex will be away for 2 weeks for some business trip. Mike will be taking over the residency project management. Tomorrow we are scheduled for 3 hour framemaker training. In the afternoon we will be finalising the scenarious for the redbook ( Hopefully we will have the 4th person checked in by then)

This site is where IBM makes its z/os machines. IBM System Z9 machine at the lobby. Not sure if it is a skeleton or working model though....
IBM System Z9 machine

The walls are decked with many many Redbooks published from this site on one side and many many redbook residency leaders on the other side.

The Redbooks library and current ITSO residents. ( See if you can spot me ...)

Quotable Quote: "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." –- Aristotle

Picture of the family at the entrance of our house.

The crocodile park heavily populated with one too many of these...

My daugther holding a python at the park.

At kovalam beach next to the park.

Quotable Quote: Never Rest on your laurels. Keep challenging yourself. Keep raising the bar and keep reaching new heights.