Solutions
by Softech
Second
Edition - May 1996
Softech Solutions, Inc.
300 North County Rd 427 Suite 100 Longwood FL
32750
1-407-331-TECH(8324)
1-407-331-5570(Fax)
SSI@SoftechSolutions.com
Welcome to the second
periodic edition of Solutions by
Softech. Again, we would like to know if
there is anyone else in your organization who
would like to receive it. If you have anything
that you would like to ‘publish’, please feel
free to send, fax or e-mail it to us. And again,
to the dismay of our legal council, feel free to
copy, reproduce, distribute, electronically or
otherwise, anything in this newsletter.
Did you hear why Dr. J. voted for Brent Barry during the NBA All Star Slam-Dunk Contest? He didn’t want to hear the ‘Elder Barry Whine!’
Wang World
Although the
majority of our work is for the IBM mainframe
world, we do support the technical 
needs of several Wang VS
shops. Recently Logan Lumber Company, a wholesale
lumber distributor in Tampa, Florida, upgraded
their Wang VS100 to a VS6230 Turbo. The results of
the upgrade have been dramatic. Batch programs
that ran over 4 hours now run in under 30 minutes.
On-line response time is sub-second regardless of
the load on the system. We have tried running
multiple large compiles along with multiple batch
jobs and still the on-line response time is
sub-second. The upgrade was made with a minimal
amount of coding changes. The biggest problems
were the use of device numbers above 255 on the
VS6230, which were not supported on the VS100, and
many cabling problems. The old BNC/TNC Coax/Twinax
was all replaced with twisted pair and baluns and
the Fibermux boxes that were used for the
warehouse devices were replaced with FOAPA’s
(Fiber Optic Active Port Assemblies) from Wang.
The old configuration had 16 megabytes of main
memory, about 3 gigabytes of disk storage and was
maxed out at 128 serial devices (workstations,
printers and remote tasks.) The new box has 64
megs of main memory, over 16 gigs of disk storage
and allows 256 serial devices. The footprint of
the new system is also significantly smaller
making the computer room available for an
occasional afternoon racquet ball game.
Virus Alert - In our never-ending
attempt to keep our clients free from all the
current PC viruses, here are our latest
discoveries:
The Dan Qualye Virus - Thers sumthin rong wit yur komputer butt ewe just cant figour it out!; The Federal Bureaucrat Virus - it divides your hard disk into hundreds of little units, each of which does practically nothing, but all of which claim to be the most important part of your computer
CUT ME OUT AND HANG ME
UP
When Bill was in his early 20’s his best friends grandfather, who had retired from the New York telephone company, used to run an ad in the local neighborhood newspaper, the Penny Saver. He and a friend were part time handymen and they advertised their services under the above caption. They wanted people to be able to find them when they needed a handyman. Well, we would like to suggest to you that Softech Solutions serves much the same purpose as Bill’s friend’s grandfather and his friend - when you need us we’re here to help. Use us to manage your application development peaks and valleys effectively.
So . . .
Why isn’t phonetic spelled the way it sounds?
On The
Shelf
The following are previous enhancements and projects that we have done which may be of use in your operation.
Application Processing
Requeuing to Approve Review class for manual release to AR - ensures that approved applications are held in the approved review class until released from that class to the AR system. Class is selected by Type.
Classification Summary -a real-time summary of applications in the Edit Queue, and Work Queue. Selection into individual classes is accomplished from the summary screen.
Source Statistics - a real-time subsystem tracking applications by source and type. Summaries are shown individually or by all sources / all types, specific source / all types, and all sources / specific type. Statistics are held by day, WTD, MTD, YTD, and month/year. Avg score, nbr and % of approvals and declines are tracked across 20 user defined score ranges. Nbr submitted is also tracked.
Type Transfer - a real-time function to copy an application from one type to another with options to retain memos and credit reports. By option, you can be taken to maintenance or restart.
Activity Status - provides the ability to see the exact status of today’s applications and for all non-decisioned applications on file.
Authorizations
Standalone retail VISA Interface - an interface to VISA for real-time retail authorizations.
Conversions / Compliance - we have done portfolio conversions and compliance implementation for various customers with great success.
Solution Needed
Here’s your chance to provide Softech with a Solution and win a great prize while you are at it. A random drawing will be made from all correct answers received by June 30, 1996 and the winner will receive a Softech Solutions golf shirt. Put your thinking caps on! This is a three part question:
1 - name a word with three consecutive dotted letters; 2 - name a word with four consecutive vowels; 3 - name a word with three consecutive sets of double letters.
We believe that there is one and only one word for each answer, but we will accept any non-capitalized ‘Webster’ word as valid (sorry out there in the Aloha state but Hawaiian words don’t count.) We think a small hint is in order, so here it is. If you were horsing around while you were standing in line waiting for your English accountant you might use all of these words in describing your experience! Good Luck!
Techie
Tips
COBOL II Object Module Considerations
With COBOL II, you can specify that all the "run-time" COBOL subroutines (those "IL..." modules) be dynamically loaded at execution instead of redundantly link-edited into the base module that uses it. By doing so, you can dramatically reduce the size of a module load library. We have seen the size of a loadlib utilizing this technique drop to as much as a third of its original size. This is true for both batch and CICS load libraries, although more consideration needs to be taken for CICS loadlibs due to the potential for a "synchronous halt" to CICS until the I/O for the module is complete. Refer to IBM manual "CICS ESA Performance Guide", Chapter 20, Programming Considerations, COBOL Residence Options for more CICS detail.
When executing batch programs, you need only add the run-time COBOL II routines library to your STEPLIB JCL statement. In batch there is very little "downside" to this technique. When the modules are linked into the base module, all the routines are loaded at batch program startup. When they are dynamically loaded, they are only loaded during execution on a "when used" basis. Thus, a small amount of "fetch" overhead will exist. However, it is our opinion that the large amount of "reclaimed" loadlib space more than compensates for this minor negative. There is one other potential drawback that must be understood. When link-editing COBOL modules into the base module, you can rest assured that installing a new compiler or release of compiler will not affect the operation of your program, at least not until you recompile it. When the modules are dynamically loaded, a "flawed" COBOL module could appear and cause a problem, even though you have not changed or compiled your program. We have personally had nothing but positive results utilizing dynamic COBOL modules.
In order to take advantage of this in batch, the compiler options involved with COBOL II are AMODE, RMODE, RENT, and RESIDENT. In addition, these compiler options can be overridden during link-edit via the PARM option. When RENT (re-entrant) is the option, the compiler forces ANY for both AMODE and RMODE. If NORENT is used, RMODE and AMODE defaults depend on the RESIDENT option. If RESIDENT is specified, AMODE is ANY and RMODE is 24. If NORESIDENT is the option, AMODE is 24 and RMODE is 24. You can override the defaults of ANY to 24 or 31 using the PARM parameter during link-edit. To condense this down to something useable, use the following COBOL II options during batch compilations: DYNAM, RENT, and RESIDENT. The on-line module options we used were: NODYNAM, RENT, and RESIDENT.
(The preceding Techie Tip was brought to you by Ron, so if you have any questions or comments, his home number is 407-555-1212 and he is usually available for questions from 1-4 in the morning - only kidding, call him at the office if you have any questions.)
We will have our Non-Techie tip again next edition.
Softech On the Go
Over the last several months, we at Softech have been very busy. Here are some highlights:
Ron
just returned from
a two-month stint in Boise, Idaho where he helped
with CardPac Compliance and de-conversions. 
Aside from the work, Ron
skied for the first time and eventually got to
where he could even do the "black
diamond" courses. Although Ron had a lot of
"yard sales" (that’s short for
cart-wheeling down the slopes), he faired much
better than his wife Debbie who visited and
shattered her ACL on her first day. He says he’ll
never think of potatoes again when someone
mentions Idaho. In all his travels he claims to
have never seen more beautiful country than much
of Idaho (but he has done most of his traveling at
night.)
Bill
spent the first
part of the quarter implementing an upgraded Wang
VS system (See Wang World above) 
and then spent a little
over a month doing compliance and miscellaneous
interface work in Hawaii. He got no
sympathy from anyone when he called back
complaining about how he hated being on the road.
Although he did have to work a lot, he did manage
to get his wife out for a week of semi-vacation.
After the Hawaii project, Bill and Kathy attended
Kathy’s annual family reunion (Mahoney Madness
VII) in Atlanta, Georgia. Fortunately it was early
enough to miss the Olympic ‘Madness’.
Currently, Bill is busy implementing a new
interface between a NEC telephone system and a
Wang VS computer as well as putting together this
newsletter.
Ed has been doing some of
the coding that almost made him famous. He had to
write a Visa "specialized retail"
authorization interface that has been certified
and running live for several weeks now. Somehow he
managed to also buy a new house and commit to
getting married (he and Janice will be marrying in
late May). Ed’s current project is requiring him
to spend some time in San Francisco which,
coincidentally is where he and Janice will be
honeymooning.
Scott is the only one who has
stayed home lately. He has been busy enhancing the
CDM application for several of our local
customers. Over the last couple of months, Scott
and his wife Carol have made several scuba dive
trips, a couple involving some weekend trips to
the Florida Keys. They have a new addition to
their family - a new boat. Oddly enough, its just
the right size for the Softech Partners to all fit
into if we ever get a break from this thing called
work.
Bill and Scott also got to experience a
once in a lifetime opportunity by attending the
Master’s golf tournament at Augusta National
Golf Club and ‘Yes’ it is even more beautiful
in person than it is on TV. Also part of the group
were Ralph Monger, Dave Morgan, Rollie Hinton and
Jim Gillin, names we’re sure a lot of you
recognize from days gone by.
Looking back, it has been a fast-paced quarter.
Suggestions Wanted
Just in case you are not into word games but still would like an opportunity to win Softech Solutions golf shirt here’s your chance. If you submit a suggestion to us that we end up using in our newsletter we will send you a golf shirt. It can be a Techie Tip, a Non-Techie Tip, or an article (sorry, nothing for jokes, although we will give you the credit if you want!)
Surfing on THE WEB
Well what did you expect? Everyone else is doing it and now, so are we. Softech has created its first attempt at a homepage on the World Wide Web. Even though we are still in the process on ‘fine tuning’ and we are also evaluating other providers, we would like you to ‘visit’ our web site and let us know what you think.
Observations of a 17 Year Old
Bill’s son, after
watching a freeze warning plant update on
the local news commented, "Isn’t it ironic
that you need to bring in or cover most of your
plants but that the Pansies will be OK to leave
outside unprotected?" Next time someone calls
you a Pansy you can smile at them and nod with
ultimate self-assurance.
Copyright © 2000
[Softech Solutions, Inc]. All rights reserved.