NIH Experiences a Smooth Rollover into the Year 2000
NIH successfully met the year 2000 (Y2K) challenge. In the successful—and uneventful—rollover, NIH preserved the safety of patients and animals, maintained the integrity of biomedical research, and continued the smooth administration of intramural and extramural research programs.

NIH Electronic Council Book—An Electronic Success Story
The NIH Electronic Council Book (ECB) is an innovative approach for using Web technology to facilitate and streamline the NIH advisory council process. The ECB is used in some form by essentially all institutes and centers to process the approximately 42,000 grant applications NIH receives each year. The ECB can save an enormous volume of printing, duplicating and mailing costs and is available anywhere there is access to the Internet.

The Plug Will Not Be Pulled on WYLBUR in February 2001!
The retirement of WYLBUR scheduled for early next year has been postponed. As a result of an extensive analysis of IC dependencies on WYLBUR, CIT has determined that it is much more cost effective to modify the existing WYLBUR and produce a version that does not require major operating system modifications. The ultimate retirement date for WYLBUR has not yet been determined.

Getting Ready for the OS/390 (MVS) Standard System
CIT expects to have the OS/390 standard system ready to accept production work by the end of fiscal year 2000, and to complete the migration of the existing MVS systems within the subsequent 18 to 24 months. A seminar on May 19 will allow North and South system application owners and account sponsors/ADP coordinators to learn of proposed system changes and gain information that will help them plan for the migration of their applications to the new environment.

MVS North System to Adopt Mandatory Password Expiration on April 17
On April 17, the MVS North system require RACF password expiration, eliminating it as an optional practice for ADP coordinators. This change will make the North system adhere to current guidelines for data center security. The article describes some changes that will affect North system RACF coordinators.

Switching to Generic RACF Profiles on the MVS North System
CIT urges all MVS North system users to learn about and use generic RACF data set profiles. One generic profile can cover tens, hundreds, even thousands of similarly-named data sets. The article provides help on making generic profiles work and shows the commands to use.

CIT’s POP/IMAP Service to Move
CIT has plans to transfer the 1,500 POP/IMAP e-mail accounts to the Central Email Service (CES). These accounts will be offered at no direct charge to the customer, and the transfer should have a minimal effect on users. Because CES supports POP and IMAP, e-mail clients currently in use will continue to work, although some client reconfiguration will be required.

Web RACF—New, Improved Version
The RACF Web page was recently improved to allow users to navigate more easily and to provide consistency with other CIT web-based services.

Let Us Know How You Use Anonymous FTP on the MVS South System by April 10
CIT is currently determining whether to provide anonymous file transfer protocol software on the OS/390 (MVS) standard system. You can help us by telling us how you use anonymous FTP on the South system. Please respond to the Web-based survey by April 10.

Reminder—pcon.cu.nih.gov to Retire on March 31
As previously announced, the protocol converter will be removed from service on March 31, 2000. Users must employ an alternate means of establishing 3270 sessions with the MVS South system.

Performance Enhancements to NBARS (ADSM)
To keep abreast of the growing popularity of the NIH Backup and Recovery Service (NBARS), CIT will soon be moving to a new high-capacity tape technology and making other enhancements that will improve performance and increase storage capacity.

Reminder—TCP/IP Clients Are Available for PCs
NIH users can download three TCP/IP clients—QWS3270 Plus, WS_FTP Pro and NetTerm—to replace old clients that are no longer provided or supported by CIT.

Interface Web Pages Have Been Updated
Annual indexes for 1990, 1991, 1992 and 1993 have been added to the Interface Web page.

Batch Processing Manual—New Version Covers Both the MVS South and North Systems
The latest version of Batch Processing and Utilities at the NIH Computer Center contains separate sections for the MVS South and MVS North systems. North system customers who subscribe to the Information Technology Service User’s Guide will automatically receive an initial copy of the Batch Processing manual.

VSM—A New Storage Technology for the OS/390 (MVS) Systems
The virtual storage manager (VSM), recently acquired for the MVS environments at the NIH Computer Center, is a new storage technology that improves performance and reduces human intervention. CIT will be implementing VSM on the MVS North system and OS/390 standard systems over the next six months and in the MVS South system in 2001.

Changes Have Recently Been Made to Dialup Hardware
Recent changes to dialup hardware provide more reliable, efficient access to the OS/390 (MVS) systems. Several underused and obsolete facilities will be removed: Renex and BTAM will be removed from the MVS North system on Monday, April 17, and Bell 208B modems will be phased out soon on both the North and South systems.

CIT Computer Training Adds 18 New Courses
The spring semester offers a record 120 courses, including 18 new ones.

Computer Training Calendar—Spring 2000