Interfaces and Integration Points Best Practices › IBM WLM

IBM WLM

CA7ONL can facilitate the use of WLM for balancing work on the mainframe.

CA WA CA 7 Edition provides features which can facilitate the use of IBM WLM (Workload Management System) scheduling environments to manage your batch workload. A scheduling environment is a list of WLM resource names and their required states (ON, OFF, or RESET). Through CA WA CA 7 Edition Virtual Resource Management (VRM) definitions, you can assign IBM WLM scheduling environments to individual jobs and have CA7ONL automatically add the appropriate SCHENV= keyword at job submission time. These VRM definitions use the variable (VAR) resource type and can be associated based on schedule ID (SCHID). When CA7ONL prepares to submit a job, it scans VRM variable definitions for the SCHID of the job. If an appropriate VRM variable definition is found, it is used to set the value of the SCHENV keyword to insert.

Business Value:

This best practice lets you exploit WLM to control batch work.

Additional Considerations:

CA WA CA 7 Edition supports the definition of VRM variables using the RM panels. The sole purpose of a VRM variable definition is to control SCHENV keyword insertion. SCHENV keyword insertion can be tailored to a specific run of a job by defining a VRM variable in the resource profile of the job.

A VRM WLM variable is indicated when VAR is specified as the resource type in the definition on the RM.1 panel. When VAR is specified, the FREE value is not used and is always set to N. The resource name in the definition must begin with 'SCHENV.'. This signifies that the variable is used for SCHENV insertion. The second node of the resource name designates the WLM scheduling environment that must be available for the job to run. This value must conform to IBM naming conventions for scheduling environments.

The setting of the WLMSE keyword on the OPTIONS statement in the initialization file governs SCHENV keyword insertion. IF N or NO is coded, CA7ONL does not attempt SCHENV keyword insertion. WLMSE=Y or WLMSE=YES indicates that CA7ONL is to insert the SCHENV keyword. If a value other than Y or YES is coded, CA7ONL assumes that it is a global default. The global default is inserted when CA7ONL is unable to determine a more specific value for the job.

First, CA7ONL scans for an entry with an SCHID value matching that of the job being submitted. If a match occurs, the value from the resource name is inserted on the JOB statement. If no match occurs, a scan is made for an entry with an SCHID value of 0. If found, this value is the SCHENV value used on the JOB statement. If neither is present, CA7ONL attempts to use the global value defined in the initialization file, if one is available. If no global value has been defined on the WLMSE keyword of the OPTIONS statement, the job is submitted without any SCHENV keyword insertion.

Note: All scheduling environments must be defined to the IBM WLM.

If the JCL for a job already has an SCHID keyword on the JOB statement, it is not overridden or validated. If a job is submitted with an SCHID keyword that specifies a scheduling environment that is not part of the current policy, the job terminates with a preexecution JCL error.

More Information:

For more information about resource types and examples, see the CA WA CA 7 Edition Database Maintenance Guide.