Automation Solutions

SA z/OS provides solutions that enable automatic processing of z/OS components, data sets and job scheduling systems as well as automation procedures that are useful tools in the automation processing context. By using these prefabricated automation procedures you can save the time to develop your own procedures to handle the processing in corresponding situations.

The solutions for automatic processing of these situations include definitions in the automation configuration files and automation procedures.

It is common to all the solutions that are provided that the automation procedures first determine whether automation is allowed by checking the corresponding automation flags with the AOCQRY command. See IBM Z® System Automation Defining Automation Policy for further information concerning types and settings of automation flags. Use the DISPFLGS command to display or temporarily change the current settings of the automation flags.

Some of the automation routines respond to messages by issuing commands from the automation configuration files. Most of these automation routines keep track of the reception of these messages and compare the frequency of the incoming messages with predefined thresholds of infrequent, frequent, and critical levels. If such a defined threshold is exceeded, it is used as the option for selecting the appropriate commands according to the first field in the command entry of the MESSAGES/USER DATA policy item of the configuration file. If no threshold is exceeded the commands defined for the selection option ALWAYS are issued. See How SA z/OS Uses Error Thresholds in IBM Z System Automation User's Guide for further information on setting up thresholds.

This chapter describes the details of the automation functions that are provided with SA z/OS.