Joined: 09 Mar 2011 Posts: 7309 Location: Inside the Matrix
Whilst wondering around the internet last night, looking for information about the AWO compiler option, I kept encountering "performance tuning" tips. Most of which just rip-off one of the following documents, uncredited.
Quote:
COBOL Performance Tuning
The following COBOL Performance Tuning papers are available:
Enterprise COBOL for z/OS and OS/390 Version 3 Release 1
COBOL for MVS & VM Version 1 Release 2
VS COBOL II Release 3.2 and Release 4.0
So, if you want to make yourself look like a "tuning" expert, and you can do a google search and some basic text copy/paste, off you go, make a name for yourself... no other skills or thought necessary.
It is a similar thing with the some of the "abend" information. Just ripped-off uncredited from the CBT tape, mostly.
Joined: 06 Jul 2010 Posts: 765 Location: Whitby, ON, Canada
Just last month I reviewed a performance tuning document produced by a major consulting firm. The wording used in most of the recommendations looked very familiar. I checked, and yep, it was copied verbatim from the Enterprise Cobol Performance Tuning Guide.
Rule #1 of most consulting companies seems to be "If they need us, they're a bunch of idiots who won't notice that we're very good at plagiarising and stealing other people's ideas, and presenting them as our own".
Joined: 06 Jul 2010 Posts: 765 Location: Whitby, ON, Canada
A little plagiarism of my own:
A shepherd was herding his flock in a remote pasture when suddenly a brand new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud toward him. The driver, a young man in a Broni suit, Gucci shoes, YSL tie and Ray Ban sunglasses leans out of the window and asks the shepherd, "If I tell you exactly how many sheep you have in your flock, will you give me one?"
The shepherd looks at the man who is obviously a Princeton grad, then looks at his grazing flock and calmly answers, "Sure, why not?"
The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Sony notebook computer, connects to his AT&T cell phone, surfs to a NASA page on the Internet where he calls up a GPS satellite navigation system to get an exact fix on his location. He feeds that data to another NASA satellite which scans the area in an ultra-high resolution photo.
The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility located in Hamburg, Germany.
Within seconds, he receives an e-mail on his "Palm Pilot" that the image has been processed and the data stored.
He then accesses a MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with hundreds of complex formulas. He uploads all of this data via an e-mail on his "Blackberry" and, after a few minutes, receives a response.
Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP Laser jet printer and turns to the shepherd and states, "You have exactly 1,586 sheep."
"That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my sheep," says the shepherd.
He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on, amused as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.
Then the shepherd says to the young man, "Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my sheep?"
The young man thinks about it for a second and replies, "Okay, why not?"
"You're a consultant," says the shepherd.
"Wow! That's correct," answers the yuppie. "But how did you guess that?"
"No guessing required. You showed up here even though nobody called you... you want to get paid for an answer I already knew to a question I never asked... and... you don't know s--- about my business.
My brother-in-law was a wedding photographer for a while. He said he raised his prices from $300 to $1000 for one reason: Nobody would listen to him if he charged less than $1000.
He did the exact same work as before, but at the $300 price, he would have to chase people around and get them to pose, and they would ignore his suggestions. At $1000, people would stand where he told them and do what he said.
The same thing for performance. Everyone in a shop thinks they know how to do it, and you can get into huge arguments about what works best. Until you pay somebody big money, nothing gets done.
That being said, the money is usually best spent finding a way to IMPLEMENT the performance changes in a way that a shop can handle. Another big plus is DECIDING WHAT PERFORMANCE MEANS for that shop. Are you trying to reduce batch window time, CPU use, TAPE I/O? Pay somebody to document it, and everybody puts down their axe-grinding oil and comes to a consensus.
Just last month I reviewed a performance tuning document produced by a major consulting firm. The wording used in most of the recommendations looked very familiar. I checked, and yep, it was copied verbatim from the Enterprise Cobol Performance Tuning Guide.
