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Best IMS DB Unload Utility


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jjabez10

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Joined: 20 Sep 2016
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 22, 2016 11:15 pm
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Hi,

Did anyone tried different unload utility for IMS DB? I would like to know which one on the market is best in terms of CPU consumption?

We have Neon (BMC Eclipse) utility which is consuming more CPU and would like to know which one works best.

Thanks
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Akatsukami

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PostPosted: Thu Sep 22, 2016 11:37 pm
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Consuming more CPU than what? Evidently your shop has at least one alternative.
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Robert Sample

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PostPosted: Thu Sep 22, 2016 11:38 pm
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Quote:
We have Neon (BMC Eclipse) utility which is consuming more CPU
Consuming more CPU than WHAT?
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prino

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Joined: 07 Feb 2009
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Location: Vilnius, Lithuania

PostPosted: Fri Sep 23, 2016 1:35 am
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jjabez10 wrote:
We have Neon (BMC Eclipse) utility which is consuming more CPU


Like: What's the difference between a dead bird?

(If you really want to know: Its one leg is just as long!)

Or,

"Question: What's faster, a canary or a parakeet? Answer: A jet, because a camel has two humps."
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Rohit Umarjikar

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PostPosted: Fri Sep 23, 2016 2:00 am
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Take a look here, if that's the intent.
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jjabez10

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PostPosted: Fri Sep 23, 2016 7:04 pm
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Akatsukami & Robert,

At our shop, they use Neon utility for all the unload jobs and all the jobs are running longer and consuming more CPU.
As an alternative, I tried comparing with File Aid utility which in turn consumed more CPU than Neon Utility. Hence reached out to this forum asking for any other utility which would perform better than BMC Neon or File Aid.
They replaced IBM HSSR with Neon several years back when I was not around with this Client. Not sure of the reason.

Thanks Rohit. I'll take a look at the post whether it helps.

Prino,

There is no reason here to mock at me. My question is straight forward asking whether anyone compared different unload utilities and know which one in the market is best for CPU consumption. Depends on it, I would suggest the team to purchase the tool as they are looking for an alternative. If you can't help, please do not mock and hurt other's feelings. Thanks for understanding.
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Robert Sample

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PostPosted: Fri Sep 23, 2016 7:20 pm
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Quote:
all the jobs are running longer and consuming more CPU.
You STILL have not explained what you are comparing against -- if you mean they are using more CPU than they used to, you need to explicitly say that -- we are not mind readers and psychic day was yesterday.

And, as you found out with File Aid, merely changing from one unload utility to another may NOT decrease CPU time -- the new utility may use the same or more CPU time so merely changing unload utilities is unlikely to help much. And "best" utility is a very subjective evaluation -- someone may say best is lowest EXCP count while someone else says best is lowest CPU time and so forth.

First, you need to quantify things -- if you're talking about a job going from 15 CPU seconds to 20 CPU seconds, there's not much chance you're EVER going to be able to reduce CPU usage enough to make a difference, and you have already wasted more company money worrying about it than you're likely to recover in the next several years. If you are talking about a substantial increase such as going from 250 to 500 seconds, then you need to find out WHY the increase occurred. If the data base size doubled, then yes that could mean twice as much CPU time to unload the data.

The bottom line is that you are asking a very fuzzy question, you are not explaining what you want nor why you see it as a concern, and now you're starting to complain about the responses you ARE getting. I suggest locking this topic as a waste of EVERYBODY'S time, based on what you've said so far.
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jjabez10

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PostPosted: Fri Sep 23, 2016 8:22 pm
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Robert

Here is the problem statement. We pulled top CPU consuming jobs from SMF 30 report to identify potential opportunity towards saving MIPS and we could notice most the top CPU consuming jobs are Unload utility jobs.

This is just a step towards identifying opportunities in reducing the MIPS. If you or experts have already compared by trying different products on which one will use less CPU, then we thought of taking your inputs.

We are already started looking to get out of BMC suite and hence any suggestion would help.

Please do not mistake me and I'm not complaining. I'm concerned about the response from Prino and expressed the same.
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Rohit Umarjikar

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PostPosted: Fri Sep 23, 2016 8:43 pm
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jjabez10,
Welcome!
There is no need to get hurt and feel bad but let me tell you that,experience these Experts have is incredible and you will most likely get plenty of knowledge and variety of solutions to the complex problems.
The only thing everybody wanted is to elaborate the situation, Robert's comments suffice that.
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Robert Sample

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PostPosted: Fri Sep 23, 2016 8:50 pm
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Quote:
most the top CPU consuming jobs are Unload utility jobs.
BMC utilities, like most vendor products, are fairly well optimized already. It is entirely possible that there are NO tools on the market that will use less CPU time to unload your IMS data bases. The mere fact that these jobs are using the most CPU time does not, in any way, shape, or style, indicate that they are inefficient nor that their performance can be improved. And why didn't you START by explaining what you were doing instead of wasting so much time?

Terminology is critical in IT where similar terms may mean very different things. And your term
Quote:
reducing the MIPS
is absolutely meaningless -- the ONLY way to "reduce the MIPS" is to downsize to a smaller piece of hardware. MIPS refers to the processing capacity of the hardware and hence you CANNOT reduce MIPS without changing hardware. You may reduce CPU consumption for jobs, but that is not reducing MIPS -- that is reducing CPU consumption. And if the ultimate goal is to reduce costs, reducing CPU consumption of jobs may have ZERO impact on costs (for example, if the machine was purchased outright). If your machine is leased, or your machine is run by a service bureau that charges your organization, then yes reducing CPU time could reduce costs but whether or not it will depends upon the actual contract in place. And replacing the software could easily run US $100,000 or more so you'd have a LONG payback period for that investment.

I think you and your organization started with an incorrect assumption -- the mere fact that a job is using a lot of CPU time means that it can be reduced. This assumption may -- or may not -- be true. And even if it is true, what is required to achieve the goal may not be acceptable (for example, if your organization stops using IMS then you can reduce the IMS unload job CPU consumption to zero -- but it is entirely possible that the IMS replacement will require MORE CPU to unload its data than is currently used by the IMS unload jobs).

You can investigate, on your own, other tools to unload IMS data bases but don't expect any of them to provide radical improvements in CPU consumption. A few percent difference is about all I'd expect from any vendor product.
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Gary Jacek

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PostPosted: Sat Sep 24, 2016 12:25 am
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The vendors that create database unload/reload/index builder utilities live and breathe performance. Their product authors (in the case of BMC) expend great effort tuning their code. Performance is under a microscope. Some other vendor with better code could steal their customers away. So it is a vendor to vendor arms race.

Meanwhile...

Your COBOL applications may have been compiled/linked/bound ages ago. If you took those applications and ran them through a current Enterprise COBOL compiler with performance options to match your current hardware and newer instruction set, you would likely see improved performance.

A quick Google of "Enterprise Cobol Performance" will take you to a wealth of information that may better serve your needs.

If you use DB2, when was the last time your executed RUNSTATS and had a good look at the SQL being executed? Is the SQL optimized? Do you have any tools that will tell you how to improve things?

On the other hand, if your management has locked into the religion of "get rid of vendor xxx", then they may not be interested in having a deeper understanding of what contributes to CPU use and opportunities to improve it.
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jjabez10

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PostPosted: Sat Sep 24, 2016 12:45 am
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yes they are in the process of getting rid of this vendor. Hence started looking for any other vendor with better performance

Thanks all for your input..
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Nic Clouston

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PostPosted: Sat Sep 24, 2016 7:58 pm
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What happens if there is no other vendor with better performance or not even equal performance?
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