OTMA conversational transaction timeout enhancement

In IMS 15.3, you can configure IMS Open Transaction Manager Access (OTMA) to end conversational transactions and remove from storage the control blocks associated with those transactions if the transaction is inactive for a specified period of time.

You specify the time period on the ENDCONV= parameter of the DFSOTMA descriptor, which is in the DFSYDTx member of the IMS PROCLIB data set. If the conversational transaction is idle for the specified period after the prior iteration of the conversational transaction completes, OTMA ends the transaction.

With this enhancement, you have greater control in preventing IMS storage space from becoming flooded with process management resources, such as transaction instance blocks (TIBs), for transactional conversations that are no longer needed, and in ensuring that your business transactions can continue to be processed by IMS.

Changes to installing and defining IMS

The DFSOTMA descriptor in the DFSYDTx member of the IMS PROCLIB data set is enhanced with the ENDCONV= parameter. When a conversational transaction has been inactive for the amount of time that you specify, the idle transaction is ended and the resources, such as the TIB, associated with the transaction is removed from IMS storage.

Changes to troubleshooting for IMS

For a list of the messages and codes that are new or changed for this enhancement, see the IMS messages and codes row in the table in Documentation changes.

For a complete list of all of the new, changed, and deleted messages, and abend codes in IMS 15.3, see Message and code changes in IMS 15.3.

Documentation changes

The following table lists the publications that contain new or changed topics for the OTMA conversational transaction timeout enhancement. Publications that are not impacted by this enhancement are not included in the table.

Table 1. Links to topics that have new or changed content for this enhancement
Publication	Links to topics
Release planning	General planning information for IMS 15.3 IMS 15.3 enhancements IMS 15.3 Transaction Manager continuous delivery functions OTMA conversational transaction timeout enhancement (new) (this topic)
System definition	DFSOTMA descriptor syntax and parameters
Communications and connections	Impact of OTMA message TIBs on storage Terminating conversational transactions in OTMA
Operations and automation	Operator control of conversational transactions
IMS messages and codes	DFS messages DFS4930I (new)