Spring 2025 Edition
The weather is getting warm (if not hot) and with May just a few days away, the ASAP University conference is almost upon us! Hope to see you there!
For anyone who somehow missed the announcement, 9.5 zWS, Workload Scheduler and Workload Automation go out of support September 30, 2025. This was announced August 6, 2024:
I’ve found out that there is a form for sharing ideas, questions, etc – anyone can participate (customers, support and development, services, etc.) Here’s the link:
The newest addition to the Workload Automation product line is 10.2.4 for Workload Automation
and the Dynamic Workload Console (DWC). Release letters are here:
Release Notes for IBM Workload Scheduler Version 10.2.4
https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/7181319
Release Notes for Dynamic Workload Console Version 10.2.4
https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/7183157
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_X51WzGJeM
I’m sure there will be plenty of sessions and discussion about the new release at ASAP 2025.
One thing to note is that DB2 for z/OS will not be a supported database for the DWC mirroring
function at 10.2.4 level. Hopefully this will be addressed in 10.2.5 which should be available
sometime in the summer of 2025.
As I am writing this there is a lot of activity regarding DWC 10.2.4 and the DB2 history function,
so I have created technotes to track these issues rather than having incomplete information
in this newsletter. The first two technotes in the Technotes section deal with these topics.
These technotes will be updated as new / revised information becomes available.
SPE 10201 ( z Workload Scheduler 10.1 SPE 1)
PTFs for APAR PH64943 (APAR FOR SPE10201) are available.
Note new PTFs are numbered UOnnnnn now, we ran out of UI numbers:
All:
UO02813
UO02814
UO02815
Language Specific:
UO02816 Korean
UO02817 English
UO02818 German
UO02819 Kanji
UO02820 Spanish
APAR FOR SPE10201
(1) Listing the successor shadow jobs bound to a job in your CP
From the ISPF panels you can now list the shadow jobs that are
bound to a local job in your current plan, thus enabling you to
evaluate the impact of performing the following actions on the
local job instance:
-Browsing an occurrence external dependencies
-Browsing an operation dependencies
-Browsing an operation external dependencies
-Deleting an occurrence
-Deleting an operation
-Setting an occurrence to complete
-Rerunning an occurrence
-Setting an occurrence to waiting
Note:
The list of shadow jobs currently includes those that
were deleted.
(2) A more efficient flow of data between the Z controller and
Federator:
-To enhance the processing of the events sent from the Z
controller to the Federator, in the MIRROPTS statement you
can now set THREADNUM to define the number of threads used
by the DB Filler task and SOCKETNUM to define the number of
sockets per thread.
(3) ZWS-I-31 Update sample code in line with product changes:
The EQQJVXIT sample exit stored in SEQQSAMP has been updated
with the latest DSECT for the current plan record layout.
Documentation Updates, especially for Release Migrations
Migration of trackers at IPL time (with no loss of job tracking / ETT records)
As mentioned in Cy’s corner 110, even if the checkpoint merge process (EQQPMCKP) is used,
event records can be lost if a tracker is migrated on a running z/OS system. However it is
possible to migrate a tracker to a new release during an IPL. Prior to a planned IPL, update
the subsystem name table (parmlib member IEFSSNxx) to point to a new release, and if
needed, add a STEPLIB to the SEQQLMD0 of the new release to the tracker JCL (if SEQQLMD0
for this release is not the one in linklist) . The tracker will come up on the new release after
the IPL is done. No files need to be modified. This is now documented in the Migration chapter
of the Planning and Installation Guide.
Replacing a DASD connected tracker (DASD connected trackers have been removed from the
zWS 10.2 release)
There will be an update to the section “Changing a shared DASD tracker-to-controller connection to an NCF, XCF, or TCP/IP connection” in the Planning and Installation Guide, because if a DASD connected
tracker was using SUREL(NO) – so the tracker was not doing any submits – you don’t want to change
the destination in the workstation database to one that is not “blank”, as this may cause jobs to be
submitted under a different userid than before (i.e. before they were submitted by the controller’s
userid) and this could cause security violations. Also the tracker may not have a valid EQQBRDS (internal
reader) DD statement, as this would not have been used when the tracker was DASD connected.
Flashes
If you don’t receive notification for flashes, check your settings at www.ibm.com/support/mynotifications
No new FLASHes since April 2024.
Hipers
These are the new HIPERs since January 2025:
PH65224 ZWS RESOURCE MANAGER INCORRECTLY ADDED TO INIT ASID ( INITIATOR )
9.5 UO02466 and UO02467
10.1 UO02470 and UO02471
10.2 UO02468 and UO02469
PH65283 EQQZ828E COMMUNICATION THROUGH DASD IS NOT SUPPORTED IS
ISSUED HOWEVER THE TRACKER DOES NOT HAVE HOSTCON(DASD)
10.2 only, still OPEN but local fix can be used:
LOCAL FIX:
Remove any of these parameter from the tracker EWTROPTS:
EWWAIT
SKIPDATE
SKIPTIME
EWSEQNO set to a value higher than 1
SUREL
PH64664 SECOND CUMULATIVE APAR FOR FIXES THAT WERE CLOSED WHILE ZWS V10R2M0
GA CODE WAS FROZEN AND NEED TO BE SYSROUTED
10.2 only: UO02317 and UO02318
PH64676 SEQQSAMP MEMBER EQQICVFY CONTAINS OBJECT CODE RATHER THAN SAMPLE
JCL AFTER APPLYING UI99304
10.2 only: UI99931 and UI99932
PH59387 EQQZ106W MESSAGE FLOODING IN ZWS TRACKER ADDRESS SPACE
9.5 UI95484 (SUPERSEDED BY UI99400)
10.1 UI95485 (SUPERCEDED BY UI99401)
PH62207 ABEND 0C4 ON EQQZQUEX DURING TRACKER STOP/START FOR SEVERAL
TIMES, THE ABEND OCCURRED ONLY ONCE.
9.5 UI99400
10.1 UI99401
10.2 see PH64664 for PTFs
Technotes
ZWSTECHNOTE : DB2 historical reporting issues with z/OS 3.1, JAVA V17, DB2 UTS (universal table space), zWS 10.2
https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/7231931
ZWSTECHNOTE : DWCZOS : DWC 10.2.4 installation on z/OS
https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/7231932
Diagnostic messages in SYSLOG with ” EQQZ024I =ZMAIN RMDEL2 ” after applying PTF for PH65224
https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/7184673
ZWSTECHNOTE : Additional ACTION HOLD items for PH64943 ( SPE10201 or 10.2 SPE1 ) for z Workload Scheduler 10.2
https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/7181794
ZWSTECHNOTE : A TOOL TO OPTIMIZE DATA SET TRIGGERING available from zWS 9.5 (APAR PH61114)
https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/7180062
Ideas (formerly RFE)
Note: To see the details for any idea, go to https://ideas.ibm.com/ideas/ideanumber, for example
https://ideas.ibm.com/ideas/ZWS-I-282
Z Workload Scheduler:
Report of zCentric Agents [ZWS-I-294]
To modify the APAR TAPE name and make dynamic the creation of the JCL to download the datasets. [ZWS-I-293]
Add additional variables to EMAIL and INCIDENT features [ZWS-I-292]
Add the work station (&WSID) to message EQQ8006I (job status change message). [ZWS-I-289]
Message log for operations waiting on WS parallel server [ZWS-I-288]
Insert JOB ID (from agent) in the message “PROCESSED 2E” [ZWS-I-287]
Integration of Unit Testing for zCentric Agent Plugin Development [ZWS-I-284]
Workload Automation:
I selected a few that may be of interest to zWS customers:
Feature to list and delete all the jobstreams with expired “valid to” dates. [WAO-I-587]
Automated Custom certificates with no down time [WAO-I-582]
BLOGs
You can see all the BLOGS related to workload automation (distributed workload scheduler, DWC and zWS) at http://www.workloadautomation-community.com/blogs
New BLOGs:
https://www.workloadautomation-community.com/blogs/embedded-jobs-vs-job-by-reference
Embedded jobs vs job by reference
Mend Tool – Tips & Tricks to Maximize Security Testing Efficiency
https://www.workloadautomation-community.com/blogs/dynamic-agents-what-a-surprise
Dynamic Agents, what a surprise!
Explore how to mirror the z/OS current plan to a database to enable the Orchestration Monitor
Wrap Up
I hope to see many of you at ASAP University (May 18 – 21, see details at
twsuser.org. The “Tech Talk” session will have the latest updates. For those that will
not be able to attend, there will be a recap in the July 2025 Cy’s Corner.
