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  • Managing the open source software complexity with platforms?

    July 31, 2023

    The last couple of days I was working on a new setup for software development. I was surprised (actually somewhat irritated) by the efforts needed to get things working. All the components I needed did not seem to work together: Eclipse, PHP plugin, Git plugin, html editor. The same happened earlier when setting up for…

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  • AWS IaaS first glance: my goodness how cumbersome

    July 17, 2023

    I am currently getting myself up to speed with AWS through an AWS Certified Solution Architect – Associate training. No less detail than physical infrastructure As an architect with quite a bit of background in infrastructures, I was surprised by the level of minute infrastructure details that are still needed for the design of a…

    Read more: AWS IaaS first glance: my goodness how cumbersome
  • 25 wishes for the mainframe anno 2023

    July 16, 2023

    I listed my wishes for the mainframe. Can we have this, please? For our software and hardware suppliers here is my wish list: Continuous testing is no longer an option. For the speed that modern agile software factories need, continuous functional, regression, and performance testing are mandatory. But with mainframes, the cost of continuous testing…

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  • A brief GraphQL versus REST investigation

    July 12, 2023

    People around me are talking about using GraphQL, positioning it next to or opposed to REST APIs. I was not sure how these compare so I needed to find out. In short, from 10000 feet, GraphQL is an alternatief for REST APIs for application programming interfaces. GraphQL provides more flexibility from several perspectives. Read more…

    Read more: A brief GraphQL versus REST investigation
  • Provisioning z/OS

    June 15, 2023

    This week I entertained a little talk about provisioning automation for z/OS. IBM has created a provisioning tool for z/OS that is part of the z/OS base. I talked about our experiences with the tool. It is changing to Ansible technology now. Next technology hop. Let’s talk tech again to refrain from doing things. Later…

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  • Transition to obverse

    June 13, 2023

    This blog is now transitioning. When I started the blog I wanted to write about IBM mainframe technology, giving space to other readers, presenting a fresh view. My intentions have changed, challenges have changed, and readers have changed. After some posts expressing somewhat obverse standpoints of mine, readers reacted they wanted more of that. Also,…

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  • Test if a directory exists in z/OS Unix System Services

    October 13, 2022

    Snippet of shell script code to test if a directory exists in z/OS Unix System Services.

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  • Testing the IBM Workload Scheduler API

    August 15, 2022

    We see REST API’s appearing on many middleware tools. In a previous post I have talked about the REST API on MQ. I have also been playing around with the IBM Workload Scheduler (IWS) REST API. The API is very promising. You can use it for automation of IWS administration, but also in your daily…

    Read more: Testing the IBM Workload Scheduler API
  • Testing the MQ REST API

    August 13, 2022

    I have been playing around with the MQ REST API. It works very well. Also certificate-based authentication work out of the box. Of course, you are doing something that MQ-fanatics might find horrific: reliable messaging over an unreliable protocol. They are somewhat right. By no means can MQ provide assured message delivery over an unreliable…

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  • Try out you IBM Z Open Automation Utilities

    August 11, 2022

    Please find a mini Python program to check out your IBM Z Open Automation Utilities installation and explore its possibilities. Find more information in the IBM documentation. Be aware of the particular working of passing parameters to a Python program through the command line. Invoke with:

    Read more: Try out you IBM Z Open Automation Utilities
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