Summary of changes made in z/OSMF Version 2 Release 2, as updated December 2016

This document contains information that was previously presented in IBM z/OS Management Facility Programming Guide,, SC27-8420-02, which supports IBM® z/OS® Management Facility Version 2 Release 2.

New information

New function is available for z/OSMF V2R2 when you install the December 2016 functional updates.

New REST APIs that can be used to provision z/OS software in support of IBM Cloud Provisioning and Management for z/OS are added. For an introduction, see Cloud provisioning services. For more information about the APIs, see the following:
- Resource management REST APIs, for managing domains and tenants. For more information, see Resource management services.
- Resource Pool REST APIs, for managing network resource pools. For more information, see Resource pool services.
- Software services template REST APIs, for managing templates that are used to provision software. For more information, see Software services template services and Published software service template services.
- Software services instance REST APIs that are used to manage software services instances that represent provisioned software. For more information, see Software services instance services.
- Software service instance name (SSIN) APIs. For more information, see Software service instance name services.
- Workload management resource APIs. For more information, see WLM resource pooling services.
A new topic has been added for software providers, Preparing software for cloud provisioning.
New REST APIs that can be used to work with archived workflows, as follows:
New and changed REST APIs for working with z/OS data sets, including z/OS UNIX Systems Services files. See z/OS data set and file REST interface.
System variable REST APIs. For more information, see z/OSMF system variable services.
Enhancements are made to the Workflows XML schema that is supplied with z/OSMF. This file provides the XML syntax and rules for creating a workflow definition. The enhancements allow workflow authors to create workflow REST steps, which are steps that issue Representational State Transfer (REST) requests, such as GET or PUT.
For information about REST steps and the schema elements that you can use to create them, see REST steps.
Enhancements are made to the z/OS Workflows REST interface services API. This programming interface allows the caller to create and manage z/OSMF workflows on a z/OS system. The enhancements support the use of REST steps, as follows:
- The service that is described in Get the properties of a workflow is updated to return the properties of a step that issues a REST request. The properties are included in the step-info JSON object that is returned to the requester.
- The service that is described in Retrieve a workflow definition is updated to return the schema elements for the REST steps in a workflow.
New terms are introduced. To help you distinguish REST steps from other types of steps, the terms template step and REST step are introduced in this publication, as follows:
- Template step is used to indicate a step that runs a program, such as a JCL job, REXX exec, or UNIX shell script
- REST step is used to indicate a step that issues a REST request, such as GET or PUT.

To give workflow authors more control over how variables are used, the following options are added to the Workflows XML schema:

New attribute visibility, which is added to the element variable (<variable>), specifies whether a variable is intended for public or private use. See Specifying the variable element and its attributes.
New element atCreate (<atCreate>) can be used to set attributes for a variable across workflows. See Using the element atCreate to qualify a variable definition.

The Workflows task of z/OSMF now includes an editor for workflows. You can use the Workflow Editor to view, create, and modify workflow definitions. The Workflow Editor provides a visual framework for working with the elements of a workflow definition. To get started with the Workflow Editor task, in the navigation area, select Workflow Editor. For more information, see Workflow Editor task in z/OSMF.