Valentine’s Day
I have to start with some sad news- my faithful companion Bailey, the maltipoo I half-jokingly referred to as my “assistant” (especially when it comes to the DWC on z/OS) passed away suddenly on January 25, 2026 after a very brief illness. I miss her terribly as she was always by my side or at my feet while I worked from home these past 8 years.
During that time there have been tremendous changes in the Workload Automation suite of products, with AI, cloud, RESTAPI and plugin usage seeing huge growth, as well as the use of Kubernetes and containers (docker). Some days I actually hope nostalgically to get an “old-fashioned” zWS case like a job not tracking to completion or an unexpected message in an EQQMLOG.
I also have great news as my first grandchild is due in early June, courtesy of my youngest (Mike) and his wife Jody. Mike also just completed his MBA degree. He may soon find out that MBA means “monitor: baby awake”.
While there will be some new offerings in the next few months, like SPE 4 for zWS 10.2 and 10.2.7 for distributed workload automation and DWC, there is no new release of zWS planned for 2026, so 2026 will be a good year to get to version 10 of zWS (if you are still running 9.5) or upgrade to 10.2 if you are running 10.1. If you have never ordered the zWS 10.2 release from Shop Zseries you should do it by the end of the year, because once a new release is available it will no longer by possible to easily order the 10.2 release.
I am looking forward to the ASAP conference (May 17-20 in Miami, FL) which as I write thisis 91 days, 18 hours and 30 minutes away (according to the convenient countdown time on the twsuser.org website. I will keep this issue short, and I am deliberating between putting out the next newsletter just before ASAP or delaying it until after the conference (maybe even writing it during the conference).
DWC on z/OS News
The 10.2.6 version of DWC was released December 16, 2025, and it may by downloaded from FIX CENTRAL (https://www-945.ibm.com/support/fixcentral/) using file
10.2.6-IWS-CONSOLE-Z_USS.pax ( 1,058,383,872 bytes)
10.2.6 requires JAVA V21 and Liberty 25.0.0.9.
DWC mirroring was first available on z/OS with a z/OS DB2 with the 10.2.5 release and was improved with 10.2.6. The documentation is a bit unclear so there will soon by a technote available. The title will include ZWSTECHNOTE DWCZOS MIRRORING V10R2M5 and V10R2M6.
A welcome enhancement was actually inc;uded in the 10.2.4 release, which allows any administrator to edit a zosengine that was created by a different administrator. This makes it much easier to deal with an administrator being on vacation, or getting promoted or retiring.
zWS 10.2 News
zWS 10.2 SPE 3 (SPE10203) is available – APAR PH68409. Information about SPE10203 comes is documented in this technote:
ZWSTECHNOTE : Additional ACTION HOLD items for PH68409 ( SPE10203 or 10.2 SPE3 ) for z Workload Scheduler 10.2
https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/7248241
SPE 4 (SPE10204) should be available soon, and a technote has been created for any news or action holds related to the SPE:
ZWSTECHNOTE : Additional ACTION HOLD items for PH68599 ( SPE10204 or 10.2 SPE4 ) for z Workload Scheduler 10.2
https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/7257423
Flashes
No new flashes
Hipers
APAR PH69455 System ABEND 0C7 could occur during the DP extend
10.2 PTF UO06325
APAR PH69864 PIF program ends with U3999 abend.
10.2 PTF UO06682
You can see something like this in the PIF log/EQQDUMP:
BSSE:
START ADDRESS: 140051E0
000000 14005340 14118620 000001C0 000001B4 *… ..f………*
000010 C5D8D8E8 E3D6E4C6 00000000 00000000 *EQQYTOUF……..
EQQ0000T MODULE: EQQBSFS , REASON: STOROVLY
Technotes
ZWSTECHNOTE : Install a z-centric agent using Certman utility to generate a new set of certificates
https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/7258239
ZWSTECHNOTE : DWCZOS : V10R2M6 Mirroring with DWC 10.2.6 running on z/OS with z/OS DB2 database
https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/7257427
ZWSTECHNOTE : Additional ACTION HOLD items for PH68599 ( SPE10204 or 10.2 SPE4 ) for z Workload Scheduler 10.2
https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/7257423
Ideas
Z Workload Scheduler:
WAPL: modifying all operation in an occurence at once [ZWS-I-333]
ETT Job Triggering should consider destination [ZWS-I-332]
DYNAMIC VARIABLE EXPORTING IN OPENS CONDITION [ZWS-I-331]
Produce message for NOT STARTED ALERT (EQQE150) even if NOT STARTED ACTION is coded at the same time [ZWS-I-329]
Ability to Add New Application Level User Field to Existing AD in Workload Scheduler [ZWS-I-328]
Restart/Cleanup functionality with Stepreschk (YES) to allow more flexibility at step Restart, similiar to Stepreschk(no) with allowing DDNEVER functions [ZWS-I-327]
allow DBOPT password to be 25 characters in length [ZWS-I-323]
Workload Automation:
Job statistics page missing from DWC post 10.2.6 upgrade [WAO-I-660]
Generate warnings when referencing a variable that hasn’t been defined [WAO-I-657]
To be able to send events directly to ServiceNow Event manager to trigger alerts and create incidents based on those events. [WAO-I-656]
In job logs, blank out or remove the encrypted password when using advanced job types [WAO-I-655]
BLOGs
Beyond the Bot: The Shift from Task Automation to Intelligent Orchestration
CONCLUSION
Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned back in late October that we might have a “real winter” this year- as we had a major ice storm one week, followed by over 5 inches of snow the following weekend. I think just today the last of the snow and ice has meled. So Miami seems like a great idea! I hope to see many of you there, especially if this is your first time to get to the conference.
