My money, SEPA payments, DB2 z/OS, and pureXML

A new article about how DB2 pureXML is used to process SEPA payments has been published on IBM developerWorks. SEPA is the short for Single European Payment Area, an unification and simplification of cross-border payment processes within the European Union/Euro region and associated countries.

In the article Jane Man shows some tricks in handling documents, extracting information, and updating XML documents. Some of the problems they ran into are also discussed.

XML Processing on z/OS

A new Redbook has just been published that discusses XML Processing on z/OS. The book starts out with XML Essentials, so that even beginners to the XML world can make use of this book. After the introduction the different options of XML processing, ranging from COBOL, PL/I over CICS, IMS, and DB2 pureXML to Rational Developer and Java-based solutions are discussed in an overview section. The rest of the book then deals in detail with the different options and also includes a chapter about performance and cost considerations.

Which payment is greener: Cash or Credit?

The other day I was reading about the energy consumed and CO2 produced for each Google search. Energy efficiency is a hot topic and a lot of numbers (and hot air) are produced. Energy efficient data centers, green computing/green IT, household energy consumption, and much more is what is discussed in the news, IBM's theme is the Smarter Planet.

I am certainly interested in adding CO2 and energy metrics to database benchmarks like TPC-C, TPC-H, and also TPoX. But I am much more interested in the fundamental questions of daily life: Cash or credit (or in the US still check)? Not just only which is faster at the checkout, but what is greener? How much total energy is necessary to pay with cash and how much for paying with a card, including the post-processing?