Good luck with a DTD that covers the panoply of SMF record types and 
subtypes. :-)

Might well prefer JSON myself (hip that I ain't) :-) - but similar issues 
arise with that. 

Martin (not speaking for SMF or any other Development) Packer

Martin Packer,
zChampion, Principal Systems Investigator,
Worldwide Banking Center of Excellence, IBM

+44-7802-245-584

email: martin_pac...@uk.ibm.com

Twitter / Facebook IDs: MartinPacker
Blog: 
https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/MartinPacker



From:
"McKown, John" <john.mck...@healthmarkets.com>
To:
IBM-MAIN@listserv.ua.edu, 
Date:
07/24/2012 04:30 PM
Subject:
useful? XML "encoded" SMF.
Sent by:
IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@listserv.ua.edu>



OK, remember that I'm a bit of a UNIX bigot for some things. But I was 
wondering if anybody else thinks it would be helpful to have a program 
into which we could feed SMF records (standard IBM ones, at least) and get 
out "properly encoded" XML? To me, this means that _somebody_ (hopefully 
IBM) would create a XML DTD for their SMF records along with a way to 
create XML output from SMF input records.

Why? Because it is easier to process XML using standard tools, of which 
many exist in UNIX and Linux, if the XML does _not_ include "binary blog" 
data. And it is easier to ftp non-binary XML to an ASCII based system 
accurately in order to process it there. Yes, I still want to offload 
processing from z/OS to Linux. For those luckly enough to have z/Linux, 
this could be done very efficiently over a hipersocket, assuming that the 
systems are on the same CEC.

I greatly appreciate the RACF people for doing this already. Their 
IFASMFDP exits, IRRADU00 and IRRADU86, already do this for the RACF type 
80 audit records. And also for some of the data in the SMF type 30, 
subtypes 1 and 5, records.

I don't know how the RACF people justified doing this. But it would be 
very helpful to me if some of the other "popular" SMF records would get 
this treatment as well. In particular, type 6 (printing), type 7 (data 
lost), types 14 & 15 (open), 11 (scratch dsn), 12 (rename nonVSAM), type 
26 (job purge), 62-66 (VSAM related), 109 / 118 / 119 (TCPIP information), 
110 (CICS information), 115 / 116 (MQ series). Of course, some of the
XML transformation software would be written by the group responsible for 
the software, eg: 110 by the CICS team; 115/116 by the MQ team, and so on.

I also realize that IBM might actually oppose this for a number of valid 
reasons, such as: cost to design, implement, and maintain; possible loss 
of revenue (MSU based pricing) by making it easier to process SMF 
information on another platform instead of z/OS.

Just another crazy thought.

-- 
John McKown 
Systems Engineer IV
IT

Administrative Services Group

HealthMarkets(r)

9151 Boulevard 26 * N. Richland Hills * TX 76010
(817) 255-3225 phone * 
john.mck...@healthmarkets.com * www.HealthMarkets.com

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