Within all the years of working at IT (Information Technology) related to ´financial services´ many things have changed.
What has changed is the technical stuff. The fundamentals of information technology, mathematics, analytics has not changed that much.
A lot of the information questions and challenges have been kept always the same; some are still running for years.
I have alwasy worked at the technical infrastructure (TI) in the IT, understanding and working with:
Analysts, Programmers at one side
Operating Systems, Tools, Security, Data, Databases, Datacommunications at most detailed level on the other side
Working in organizations with managers not always understanding these challenges
Personal
My profession (metier) is: IT specialist .
The roles are:
Consultant
SAS platform administrator
system engineer
The working area is: support of customers(business) with the analytics within the IT (technical) and to the details of the system engineering (technical)
J A Karman (my name), is used as my site name. Using linkedin:
You can me reach by mail in case of questions. mailto:info@jakarman.nl
I am living at Netherlands Gelderland -
solutions jakarman
Just my focus has got the most relationship to SAS as being connect to a log time.
Within the area of SAS a lot the other mentioned components horizontal (same kind other suppliers) and vertical (from hardware to business) are touched.
Without background knowledge of generic concepts regualtions and undertandings all the words working in this area would make no sense.
The basics of statistics mathematics are mostly equal with the same kind of toolings.
Experience
With SAS and Performance & Tuning I have hit this area now identified as BI (Analytics).
BI Business Intelligence is about getting sensible information presented in a way to be able to make smart decisions.
What I have done the most of the years is helping the analyst, actuary, data-miner, marketer, credit risk, or how to indicate a person working on the figures, doing their job.
Getting the tools to work, getting their data available, getting the security (their security) organized.
Reuse of knowledge
Having some statistics background the people doing analytics can be helped.
Analyzing of IT incidents/problems performance/tuning are also doing analytics.
The same tools and the same approach can be used in many business amd technical areas .
Within the Information technology guidelines and technics are evolving fast.
The high level concepts, architect enterprise level, global guidelines, the governance are leading.
The DTAP backgrounds are reference to be used by me. As from my connections I know this approach is a very common way in the Netherlands. For some reason very little information on this with the practical working out can be found on the web.
The practical working out is subject to a lot of discussions. The fundamental arguments are often bypassed getting it to more political statements. I am just gathering information here.
To implement a DTAP approach is often by-passed in projects building new implementations, because it is difficult to get the working methods accepted.
All hyping buzz-words like SAAS DAAS Cloud processing virtualization have something to do with architecting. This is something to carry with us.
Life Cycle Management (LCM ALM) , Software Configuration management (SCM), Version Control SDM ITIL Prince TMAP VMAP, many more we all to deal with.
This is my major working area of the last years. It has been the way of implementing and supporting SAS environments.
My experience with SAS is going back to the early time of around 1980.
My knowledge is kept up to date. With the certification program (see personal notes), getting in line with my work, I have done these certifications.
SAS SAAS
Software As A Service (SAAS) is a great idea. Implement it by yourself if you requirements are more strictly then can be fulfilled with "SAS on demand", or you are big enough to do a SAAS implementation yourself.
This is a more exciting exercise with many possible profits.
When doing it in the wrong way the possible risks are also high.
You need the knowledge how to do this technical and understand all the security - auditing related stuff. Al lot of information can be found but the needed basic knowledge cannot be underestimated.
Solving the SAS environment challenges with all my knowledge and experience it is brought to a much higher level as is common practice.
This applies to the aspects of
quality of the installation
operational reliability
support to the business
My attempt to document this can only cover a small part of all my knowledge and experiences.
The levels for software testing is a good standardized vision. Defined certifications are existing.
ISTQB has the mission:
Defining and maintaining a Body of Knowledge which allows testers to be certified based on best practices, connecting the international software testing community, and encouraging research.
BPM BPT
Business Process Management has been referred to as a "holistic management" approach[1] to aligning an organization's business processes with the wants and needs of clients. It promotes business effectiveness and efficiency while striving for innovation, flexibility, and integration with technology.
Business Process Testing is used at the Technology to verify new, but not implemented yet, Business Processes are functioning sufficient accordingly to requirements. To this dedicated domain of verification of quality too little is found.
ISTQB JST-JCL relation
All work at JST - JCL have I done accordingly to the documemtation found at ISTQB. But has been executed in the years this organization did not exist yet.
Just the mainframe approach I have documented at this moment, as named to some often used keywords.
With operational life SAS I have done something similar with the scripting to start SAS and the connection to business applications.
Reuse of basic ideas LCM (Life Cycle Management)
The basic design can be used in every other environment. Just the way of how tooling is or can be implemented different in chosen environments.
The conceptt are documented at the - glossary, Concepts & Regulations .
The basic questions are always the same (business):
You want to run processes (business related) in a automated way
You have to deal with DTAP environments Business Software, Business Data
Within test environments (business) you want to be able to do parallel testing
alternate dates and parallel development (business) must be possible
The basic questions are always the same (tooling):
The installation and verfication of new tooling must be able witout influencing operational business processes.
How to deal with all generic requirements as result of reggulations.
The technical part on how to integrate tools of different suppliers. Cooperation ia always challenging.
The organizational part on how to integrate tools of different suppliers. Existing processes and service contracts
JST - JCL - scripting
Structured analysing an IT problem
The IBM mainframe approach is not that major leading IT solution anymore as better and cheaper options have been introduced since my early years.
As an example of a different way of analysing and solving a IT problem it is still a good example.
In this case the way of the structure and organization working with JCL.
Experience
The main issue was structuring JCL so it could be automated and reused.
The tool it self was build with TSO/ISPF using REXX.
All work connecting to JCL was automated with the tool
General Approach JCL
This is a solution I implemented around 1996 and is was still used in 2011 (unchanged).
Still after all this years is considered to be a very modern approach.
It is automating the work of some IT-staff. This is a very unusual part of IT optimization as it is internal IT.
It contains a well-designed JCL (Job Control Language) in a DTAP (Develop Test Acceptance Production) approach.
With this approach the generating of the statements and the (re-)usage in development & testing is possible to a highly optimized process.
Because of the business optimization that is done, the whole is not available as a market solution.
It survived all years several reorganizations, the year 2000 testing, Euro testing, outsourcing to India.
I have started IT when the IBM-mainframes where dominating (1980). The role was system-programmer. When PC´s where introduced (middle of years 1980) I did that too.
As Unix, and Unix versions became more popular this was also added (arround 2007).
Always some or most working at the edge of OS and the Analytics part. The need for very good understanding of the OS as analytics does not fit into normal IT.
The descriptions of roles by IBM (mainframe world):
Mainframe sysprogrole
System programmers are needed to install and maintain the middleware on the mainframe, such as database management systems, online transaction processing systems and Web servers.
Middleware is a software "layer" between the operating system and the end user or end user application.
It supplies major functions that are not provided by the operating system. Major middleware products such as DB2®, CICS®, and IMS™ can be as complex as the operating system itself, if not more so.
The role of the system programmer has the same key points of the SAS platform administrator. Many positions are able to be found while using middleware, as it is technical, and needing for your business.
Someone has to understand the way to integrate those two worlds to get it working.
Performance Tuning
Experience
As long as there is
data for input available for processing
understanding the meaning of those data
it is just a BI - Analytics project to do.
My oldest experience is from SMF MXG on mainframes (mid of 1980´s) with this. On other machines Windows Unix or just File-transfers the same approach always could be done.
Understanding the basics of performance & tuning that is needed as Platform Admin with SAS that knowledge is to be reused.
Reuse of knowledge
Solving the questions of performance & Tuning is something of the analytics area.
The type of indormation being processed is not immediate business related. At the highest level is the goal still, optimozation efficincy and cost, business related.
Security
Security
The subject security has become complete IT-world. As it is not my personal major area of interest.
Security however is the most troublesome issue to solve.
This is coming back all the time, going into the dirtiest details. Needing the whole picture from start at design.
Monitoring Reviews and testing with analsyes are some attention points.
Difficult to explain all the technical backgrounds. It is hitting all the environments:
Technical: Windows (AD), Unix (LDAP), Mainframe (RACF), networking (ssl / certificates).
Procedural: Role Based Access (RBAC) as all related like OSG (operational Security Guideline) and BIA (Business Impact Analyses).
Relaed to Sox-404 COBIT and ISO-2700- as often mandatory guidelines.
IT Risk assesments
As a result with risk assessment and the technical security challenges ther are major issues to be solved. Sometimes I am getting more issues to solve as the security specialists.
This includes the internal technical stuff to the low level operating system (OS).
At the same time I am helping the business to solving the procedural issues like RBAC with all the administration and business policies. As analyzing security information is just analyzing data all the BI and SAS knowledge is applicable.
My other security links
In the detailed analyses and design for implementations al lot of this subject is touched.
Reuse of knowledge
Solving the questions of security involves people accessing sensitive information.
Although sometimes the questions are related to an other knowledge domain many things can be done without seeing, take notice off that sensitive information.
When I´m not at the office working; it could be my holiday. A place where I can be is like this one.
Having my holidays, I´m charging the batteries.
I can get a telephone call, asking for help, from the office.
After the support question handling off, the statement of my holiday at a nice location.
Most people I worked with know this of me.
At the picture Almira (Dufour 38 Classic) the one with fenders and colored line behind was our base.
The site is designed in a flat lay-out. The subjects are put in paragraphs. A menu-line is put in between the paragraphs.
At the subject levels the menu-line is doubled having the paragraphs on the page and to get easy back to the higher level.
There is nothing more to tell about it.
Tags to locate your found text back are present.
All text and pages are setup in blocks and are resizable by the browser.
I´ trying to use just html(-5) achieving the results an getting it nice.
Language
I have put everything in English. Dutch is my fist language. Language translation is offered by search-engines, hopefully understandable results.
Site Remarks
The documentation attempt
I know publishing my knowledge in this way can have many effects, The_Streisand_effect.
If someone would feel personally insulted, it is by no way intendend in that way.
I have to spend a lot time on it, it also needed and needs some investements. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch
The phrase and the acronym are central to Robert Heinlein´s 1966 science fiction novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, which popularized it
It is far more difficult to get it in clear understandable short portions as I expected.
I should have known:
I am sorry for the length of my letter, but I had not the time to write a short one.
Updates as of, Januari 2014
The inventarization on vendors at the BI pages needed some updates jan 10, 2014.
After a shor working break agian fully at work and having the same kind of challenges.
reshuffle of pages and information
reorderd the OS related pages in series of seven. Content still to be done. (May 2013)
Started to work on, in fact not ready to publish
Samples main page is setup, not filled all subjects.
The nice password manager as sas macro is ready.
Technical notes to this Site
Searching all pages
You are just searching some technical information and hit this page?
Choose your subject within the menu´s.
I included a search engine (google). Using other search engine like Bing Yahoo should also do.
Tip, use:
<search string> site:metier.jakarman.nl
Information on webpages
On the pages a find of your browser will help.
The way of classical indexes like should help the most time.
Power point - Office 2010
I included some presentations as link. Perhaps something is going wrong, they can be offered as download in -.zip where it should be -.pptx.
When a modern version of power-point is active, it should go well. I have this issue not on my own desktop.
Reuse and share of knowledge
personal opinion
Feel confident to share my gathered information. All personal opinions are of course without any warranty.
A link with google custom search is included.
position in a firm
The position between the business with high skilled analysts and the very technical IT is not an easy position.
It is needing much technical knowledge and very well understanding the analysts.
This position is in the middle of all of the most difficult lines in an organization.
Within all the years of working at IT (Information Technology) related to ´financial services´ many things have changed.
What has changed is the technical stuff. The fundamentals of information technology, mathematics, analytics has not changed that much.
A lot of the information questions and challenges have been kept always the same; some are still running for years.
This is a more exciting exercise with many possible profits. 
This is a solution I implemented around 1996 and is was still used in 2011 (unchanged).
When I´m not at the office working; it could be my holiday. A place where I can be is like this one.
Having my holidays, I´m charging the batteries.
At the picture Almira (Dufour 38 Classic) the one with fenders and colored line behind was our base.
