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Mass recall migrated data sets

Sometimes you need to recall a (huge number of) libraries, which fit a certain DSN pattern.

You're lucky if these DSNs (by accident) are just any of these:

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Replace IEBCOPY by SERCOPY where possible

A lot of ChangeMan ZMF submitted jobs like promote, demote, install, backout, etc. typically suffer, occasionally, these kinds of IEBCOPY related issues:

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Show user options and V0x-variables in CMN/ZMF jobs

Failures in user initiated jobs (like checkout, stage, audit, promote, ...) may be caused by special (or missing) values for so called &V0x variables and/or user options. Typical failures are:

  • invalid (or simply missing) values for DSN=... in a staging job.
  • entire jobsteps that are missing (because of some skeleton variable that has an unexpected value, or just no value at all).

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Checkout the results of a scan

ChangeMan ZMF offers a very powerfull scan facility, which allows you to search for a set of members in a baseline library that contain a certain string. However, if you want to perform an action on these members (especially if you want to check them out), you have to write down the member names included in the scan results (which is just a report ... of sometimes hundreds of component names).

It should be possible to automate the process of checking out (to a staging or private library) the members included in a scan result. So that you can use this in situations like these:

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Secure CMN/ZMF panel commands via entity checks

There are some ChangeMan ZMF functions in ChangeMan ZMF's ISPF dialog that are typically NOT allowed to be used by just any developer, e.g. because they may impact the integrity of  ChangeMan ZMF managed projects. Some examples are:

  • Revert a package back to development when the approval process has not been started (= not even 1 approval has been given), because in that case revert is allowed by anybody with application update access (and the CMNxREVR / CMNREVRT entity is not checked!).
  • Setting certain user options to some special value (e.g. some Y/N flag to skip some validation in the staging job).
  • A scratch request is commonly considered as a dangerous ChangeMan ZMF feature, because of the known  ChangeMan ZMF issues related to using scratch request, e.g.:  ChangeMan ZMF audit does not include any validations related to scratch requests.
  • A selective unfreeze (followed by edit-in-stage and re-freeze) of components in a successfully audited and frozen package, which may introduce inconsistencies for which no built-in controls exist in ChangeMan ZMF to prevent them.
  • ...

Just a complete disable of a function like 'unfreeze' (or utility request 'rename') might be an option in certain cases, which is typically done by just remove it from the ISPF panels. But how can you implement something to restrict access to such functions (without removing them entirely)?

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Check availability of all CMN/ZMF started tasks

Periodically, typically at the beginning of business hours, you should do an (automatic) verification that all your started tasks are "up", and this across all Z/OS images where at least 1 ChangeMan ZMF STC runs.

A variation of this is verifying that each of these STCs have been started with the correct options (to avoid other problems such at package installation time), to mention a few:

  • The jobname of the STC.
  • The type of ChangeMan ZMF subsystem (D-, P-, DP- or ALL-site).
  • The name of the (remote) site that the STC corresponds to.
  • ...

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ASR Runtime Environment for Z-Reports

Creating new ChangeMan ZMF reports, and or customizing any of the reports delivered with ChangeMan ZMF has always been a challenge. Mostly because it requires expertise in the REXX programming language and you need to have 'some' experience in using ChangeMan ZMF's (green) XML services. On top of that, ChangeMan ZMF does not come with any out-of-the-box charts (only reports).

Therefor, in most ChangeMan ZMF implementations, all such reporting (and charting) requests from any type of , gets routed to the (usually overbooked) ChangeMan ZMF administrators who might either not have the required REXX and/or XML experience, or don't really like to do such reporting work. Not to forget the effort that may be required when upgrading to a new ChangeMan ZMF release ...

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Using ChangeMan ZMF - Getting started

Introduction to functions and uses of ChangeMan ZMF, which is the foundation (and pre-req) for additional ChangeMan ZMF training classes, to provide general knowledge about major ChangeMan ZMF func

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Z-Course
Topics: 
  • General concepts and facilities, including:
    • ChangeMan ZMF's Change Packages.
    • The ChangeMan ZMF Lifecycle.
    • The ChangeMan ZMF Library Structure.
    • The ChangeMan ZMF Architecture.
  • ChangeMan ZMF terminology.
  • Navigating the various ISPF panels in ChangeMan ZMF (Primary menu options and Build menu options).
Audience: 
Duration (hours): 
8.00

Using the STUB panel in CMN/ZMF

Document the usages of ChangeMan ZMF's STUB panel, which will be shown it you type primary command S on ChangeMan ZMF's primary option menu (and you've been authorized to use it).

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Dead checkouts and dead stage requests

A checkout is used to get a copy from the current production version of a component (or variations like the previous version or the upcoming nearly-GA version), so that you can start a new version of it. But what about all those checkout requests that happened long time ago (a few days, weeks, months or years ago), and which are still in the same checkout status (= creating a new version of it has not yet started yet)?

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