February, 2008
by Rick Ralston, Managing Editor
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Phil Mason finishes his 3 part series on SAS 9 Tips. SASŪ 9 has many new features, as well as all the old ones. This article will try to outline some of the best new features that he has found over the last 3 years that he has been using SAS 9. In this third, Phil will discuss Macro, SQL, and some miscellaneous features.
Todd Bourne and Theo Adis write about Capacity Planning Large Scale Server Consolidation and the Datacentre. Unfortunately in many organisations Business Units are still averse to co-locating applications on the same physical server. With the current buoyant economic environment and the perpetuating opinion by some of our IT counterparts that "iron is cheap" it is still a challenge to convince the Business (who controls the purse strings) to go down the path of consolidation and virtualisation. This results in the continual poor utilisation of IT resources and Datacentre facilities and the spiralling costs of implementing and managing the exponential growth of servers in the Datacentre.
Rob Harrigan tells us how to improve Perl performance in Decreasing Perl Script Response Times with Persistent Perl. In a typical perl script-based web application the web server reads a script into memory and launches a perl interpreter process which executes then unloads it, freeing the memory for the next request. However, this is very wasteful for large programs that are used repeatedly. The same script has to be read and executed for each request, often simultaneously. What would be nice is to have your script run as a daemon or in a client-server model to reduce the repetitive calls.
Denise Kalm interviewed Tuli Nivas a CMG first timer who presented 2 papers at CMG'07. We learn about how Tuli learned about CMG and develop d her papers in Meeting Tuli Nivas.
Denise Kalm continues to talk about self improvement in The Power of WIIFM. How often do you find yourself trying to influence someone? Or ask for a favor or for some help? We've all know that person everyone wants to help, the one who can persuade. How do they do it? It isn't a gene for luck. Simply, it is the power of understanding WIIFM. WIIFM is "what's in it for me."
The MeasureIT staff points out several articles found on the web discussing Green IT in Hot Off the Web: Green IT.
Dr Bernie Domanski, the CMG'07 General Chair, has a wrap up video on CMG'07 in San Diego. Thank you Dr. Bernie leading the way for CMG'07.
Kathy Steffens, the CMG'07 Program Chair, has her conference wrap up and announces the best paper, Mullen and Michelson winners in CMG'07 Wrap-up from the Program Chair.
We are already underway building the CMG'08 Conference in Las Vegas on December 7-12, 2008. Jaqui Lynch gets us started with Introducing CMG'08. Margaret Greenberg is calling for volunteers in The Making of CMG'08, Your Assistance is Requested. Denise Kalm provides a couple of tips to get you to CMG'08 in Shortcut to Paris, and the value of having a mentor help you write your first paper in Remember your First Time?
The CMG regions are already off to a great start in 2008. Tom Kelman has an invitation to the first ever Portland CMG meeting on March 26 in CMG is Coming up Roses in Portland - a New Region is Born. Dave Thorn invites everyone in the Philadelphia area to attend their February 29 meeting in Philadelphia Computer Measurement Group. Denise Kalm reviews the Northen California Meeting on February 5 in Northern California CMG - Our Own Super Tuesday.
We are always interested in receiving your comments, suggestions, and submitted articles. Help us make MeasureIT even better in 2008.
This issue was made possible through the hard work and dedication of the MeasureIT volunteer staff, and the contributions of willing authors.
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