Step 3 - Application Events

System Automation reacts to events. More specifically, it reacts to messages sent by applications or the system itself.

There are many kinds of applications. Each of them sends a varying degree of messages which can be used to determine its status. The messages represent different states during an application's life-cycle. Normally MVS resources provide proper messages to determine the status of an application. Resources within OMVS are mostly silent.

Step 3 points you to important messages in the life-cycle of the application. As you can see below a resource is started once. After an amount of initialization time it is fully operational. When the resource is no longer needed a stop command is invoked to terminate it. After the termination processing it does not exist any longer.

Figure 1. Application Lifecycle
Application Lifecycle

What are the important messages at the points in the application's life-cycle as illustrated in Figure 1 above?

For example a message IEF403I is sent when the system observes that an application has been started. IEF404I is issued when the application terminated.

Are there are other kinds of usable events at the specific points?

Step 3 discusses also the situation of an unplanned application termination.

Are there important messages at point 3 and 4 of Figure 1 in case of an unplanned termination?

For example a message IEF450I points to an unplanned termination.