FAST400 and now FastACT: CFINT revealed

So, Fast400 has now come out with FastACT which is an interesting twist on
WRKACTJOB.

http://www.iseriesnetwork.com/nwn/story.cfm?ID=14780
As Big Blue fumes over the relaunch of governor-busting Fast400, the
product's worldwide distributor, Storage Solutions, decided to throw
a sidekick into the mix. Its latest FastAct product ousts the Work
with System Activity (WRKSYSACT) command on iSeries -- allowing
users to track performance for $500 rather than the going rate of
$10,000 for IBM's own performance tools.

The iSeries WRKSYSACT command lets users work interactively with
jobs and tasks running in the system. They view the data on the
display station and can store the data in a database file for future
use. The complementary command, Work with Active Jobs (WRKACTJOB),
lets users then work with performance and status information for the
active jobs in the system.

What distinguishes FastAct from the IBM original -- besides the
price tag -- is that the product shows exactly how much system CPU
is being eaten up by the CFINT interactive tax. "CFINT is a system
task that doesn't show up on WRKACTJOB," says Colin Wells of Storage
Solutions. "When [users] exceed [the] allotted green-screen CPU,
CFINT grows and monopolizes CPU so other jobs cannot use it. FastAct
will show what tasks are using CPU on [the] system."

In that sense, the latest product in the "Fast" family demonstrates
to proponents and skeptics alike that Fast400 is doing its job,
Wells says. "Our customers have asked for a simple way to cost-
justify Fast400," he says. "The development group responded with
FastAct." He recommends all disbelievers conduct a "before and
after" trial run. "Simply use FastAct before starting Fast400 and
look at the CPU being used by CFINT," he says. "Then start Fast400
and watch the CPU being used by CFINT drop to a very small
percentage."

A FastAct demo is available each day between 9 and 11 a.m., based on
the time set on your system clock, from http://www.fast400.net .
-- Jill R. Aitoro, Industry Reporter, iSeries Network