Leveraging your FOCUS Assets Walter Blood Technical Director FOCUS Division, Information Builders

Copyright 2007, Information Builders. Slide 2 Leveraging Your FOCUS Assets Value of Your Mainframe  Security superior to any other hardware platform  99.99% system availability  Processing power for massive volumes of data  “Green” – most efficient energy use for large number of users and massive amounts of data  Disaster recovery  Backed by IBM

Identifying Your FOCUS Assets APPLICATIONSOUTPUTS DATA ACCESSPERFORMANCE

Leveraging APPLICATIONS Interactive / Batch Number of users Use of FOCUS sink machine User developed reports and utilities Infrequently used applications/reports Heavy lifting tools APPLICATIONS

Leveraging Applications Where’s the Value 1.Currently working without problems 2.Built on rules the company is currently using 3.Access large amounts of historical data 4.Require minimal user maintenance In existing APPLICATIONS: How extensive are your assets? 1.FOCLOG 2.Site Analyzer

LOG FILE (character flat file ) LOG FILE (character flat file ) PC Analysis (Local or Information Builders) TABLEReports Mainframe Analysis Leveraging Applications FOCLOG FOCUS Online User FOCUS Batch Job FOCUS Online User FOCUS Batch Job Memory FTP [ M V S O N L Y ] FOCLOG MFD FIN

Leveraging APPLICATIONS Batch Applications For batch applications: Make the application runnable remotely Provide scheduling capability to optimize cpu usage Re-package application output for remote access Spreadsheet – Excel, Lotus Document – PDF, Postscript Data – Alpha, WP Output delivery Direct shipment via ftp or Create repository for output

Leveraging APPLICATIONS Interactive Applications For interactive applications: Separate interactive data collection/manipulation Provide data collection/manipulation information via file Replace CRTFORM with FIXFORM from file Retain original processing logic Use screen scraping tool like IBM HATS to convert screen input to HTML.

Leveraging APPLICATIONS All Applications For all applications: Isolate parts of application that can stand alone Make those pieces available as services Look for opportunities to deliver output to WebFOCUS.

Identifying Data Access FOCUS/XFOCUS Relational – DB2, Oracle, Teradata Non-relational – IMS, IDMS, ADABAS VSAM, sequential Legacy databases DATA ACCESS

Leveraging Data Access Where’s the Value FOCUS access to mainframe data FOCUS provides access to critical data Very large volumes of data High security requirements Mainframe only databases Moving the data is not really an option Too expensive – time and money Application not broken, why fix?

Leveraging Data Access Data Access FOCUS access to mainframe data To reduce mainframe runtime costs Use the most efficient FOCUS version Use FOCUS for data access only and move formatting to a less-expensive platform with WebFOCUS Fully optimize relational queries Generate, store and make available reports that are run repetitively on a daily basis with WebFOCUS Reportcaster and Report Library

Leveraging Data Access FOCUS 7.6 CPU Usage Reduction Tests Large MODIFY Load Large MODIFY UPDATE REBUILD Large TABLE SUM Large TABLE WHERE JOIN TABLE MATCH HOLD OUTPUT MAINTAIN Tests Large MODIFY Load Large MODIFY UPDATE REBUILD Large TABLE SUM Large TABLE WHERE JOIN TABLE MATCH HOLD OUTPUT MAINTAIN CPU Benchmark % of 7.6 Improvement % 30% 39% 7% 8% 18% 8% 44% 38% % 30% 39% 7% 8% 18% 8% 44% 38% % 23% 45% 16% 9% 13% 19% 47% 30% % 23% 45% 16% 9% 13% 19% 47% 30% % 26% 53% 16% 7% 10% 37% 29% % 26% 53% 16% 7% 10% 37% 29% See White Paper for performance details

Copyright 2007, Information Builders. Slide 14 Leveraging Data Access IBM zIIP No IBM charges for eligible workload CPU utilization on zIIP zIIP does not count toward overall MIPS rating of the machine  May avoid/delay Central Processor (CP) or machine upgrade Improves resource optimization by reducing latent workload demand which the CP can now absorb May stimulate some visible performance improvement “zIIP”: System z I ntegrated I nformation P rocessor

Leveraging Data Access Data Access FOCUS access to mainframe data Eliminate duplicated mainframe workload Generate, store and make available subsets of data that handle 80% of your requests. Control duplicate data Database fields – Site Analyzer Hold and intermediate files

Leveraging Outputs Screen based applications Paper based Intermediate outputs OUTPUTS

Leveraging Outputs Where’s the Value… Leveraging FOCUS output Current output – portable or not portable? Data target – ascii vs ebcdic? Accessibility – paper, screen, mobile device?

Leveraging Outputs Outputs Leveraging FOCUS output Use existing procedures with possible updates For portability: PDF, Postscript, Excel, Lotus For data transport ALPHA, XML DFIX with delimiter EXTRACT – Structured HOLD files

Leveraging Applications Structured HOLD FiIes Retains knowledge of one-to-many relationships of original file Structured data easily downloads off mainframe to WebFOCUS * More extensive syntax/options documented TABLE FILE PRINT A B C D IF C EQ 5 ON TABLE HOLD [ FORMAT EXTRACT ] * END TABLE FILE PRINT A B C D IF C EQ 5 ON TABLE HOLD [ FORMAT EXTRACT ] * END FOCUS Database Plain HOLD File A B C D HOLD EXTRACT options ALPHA, FOCUS, binary Structured HOLD File A C B D C=5 A C B D E

Leveraging Performance User volume Data volume Application requirements vs costs Security issues Allowable downtime PERFORMANCE

Leveraging Performance Considerations Retain the cost-effective performance Analyse existing mainframe applications for functionality involving data best retained on mainframe for performance: Legacy database access especially those with JOINs Data access that can be re-used by many users Large volumes of historical data Security sensitive data Move/rewrite other parts of application Balance cost of move vs cost of Mainframe Use

Leveraging Your FOCUS Assets Questions?