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Z-Factory categories

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Anything within the Z-Factory is organised by category. Below is a summary of the currently used categories.

CMN/ZMF life cycle extensions providing additional CMN/ZMF functionality (Cmn2Go)

Despites CMN/ZMF's available functionality, many CMN/ZMF users still have quite a lot of enhancement requests for even more functionality for specific phases in the CMN/ZMF life cycle.

While waiting for these requests to be implemented in vanilla CMN/ZMF, many of them can be implemented in the format of CMN/ZMF customizations, covered in the Cmn2Go category.

Perform powerful CMN/ZMF operations from a single ISPF panel (Workbench)

The CMN/ZMF dialog contains a lot of (ISPF) panels. They facilitate retrieving lots of data from CMN/ZMF, by using appropriate query panels such as:

  • query package.
  • query component.
  • query logfiles.
  • browse components.
  • etc.

The Workbench category therefor covers all sorts of power functions, mostly XML based, that simplify the usage of all such panels to operations that can be issues from a single ISPF panel. Using these power functions will give you a tremendous productivity boost as compared to using the standard CMN/ZMF ISPF dialog.

Features related to CMN/ZMF helpdesk operations and production follow-up (Console)

Though most of CMN/ZMF's users are in the development area, these developers also depend on other CMN/ZMF users like:

  • CMN/ZMF helpdesk operators (e.g. to assist developers asking for some extra help about CMN/ZMF).
  • People from the operations control (or production followup) area (e.g. final approvers of emergency changes).

The Console category therefor covers topics to facilitate the CMN/ZMF related work for a CMN/ZMF helpdesk operator and/or production followup.

Tools to simplify CMN/ZMF's global and application administration (CmnAdmin)

Maintaining a set of CMN/ZMF subsystems can be quite labor intensive, e.g. as it relates to:

  • performing (mass) application administration.
  • extending available administration options to avoid hard coding in customized panels, skeletons.
  • etc.

The CmnAdmin category therefor covers topics that simplify CMN/ZMF's global and application administration.

Reusable software components to facilitate developing additional CMN/ZMF customizations (SCMBeans).

CMN/ZMF is known for its very open architecture, with virtually no limitations as it relates to customizing CMN/ZMF to implement all sorts of additional features and functionalities. However, in performing such customizations, the complexity to upgrade from one CMN/ZMF release to another tends to increase.

Ideally, CMN/ZMF should come with a library of reusable components, that can be invoked (embedded, called, etc) in all sorts of CMN/ZMF customizations. A good sample of such reusable component shipped with vanilla CMN/ZMF is skeleton CMN$$SPR (one of the few such components shipped with CMN/ZMF). However, CMN/ZMF does not actually come with a lot of such reusable components …

That is why we at Dr.Chgman have started with our own set of it, which we call SCMBeans. SCMBeans are portable, site-independent software components implemented in components like ISPF skeletons, ISPF panels and REXXs. For us these SCMBeans serve at least these purposes:

  • It allows us to isolate lots of pieces of software components (eg: skeletons) into tiny pieces that are easy to customize for any specific CMN/ZMF implementation. Typical samples of this are:
    • job card skeletons.
    • steplib- or joblib concatenations with site specific DSNs.
    • configuration options so that the same piece of software may provide functionality that depends on the selected options.
  • It facilitates the reuse of software components to develop more complex components. Typical samples of this are:
    • All sorts of staging output processing via CMNBAT90 and SERCOPY job steps.
    • Various functions implemented via ISPF panel exits (within various CMN/ZMF panels).
    • To support a special component type (like QMF, DDL, ACBGENs, JCL validations, etc) we typically construct a single skeleton (used for functions like checkout, in stage, promote, install, backout, etc.) that will use input or output DSNs based on the value of a variable to indicate the function being executed.
  • It facilitates the reuse of CMN/ZMF customizations, so that you reduce the effort to upgrade such customizations to new releases of CMN/ZMF.

Facilities to reduce CMN/ZMF's resource consumption and enhance its overall performance (TuneUps)

CMN/ZMF is a very rich product and can be customized in many ways. Which is what many (if not all …) CMN/ZMF customers have done. However, CMN/ZMF also has some challenges as it relates to:

  • Reduction of CMN/ZMF's resource consumption (don't expect your MIPS to go down by introducing CMN/ZMF ...).
  • Various performance issues which may be enhanced (sometimes even with some minor customizations that should be part of the base CMN/ZMF product).

The TuneUps category therefor covers topics to reduce CMN/ZMF's resource consumption and enhance its overall performance.

Powerful software packages to implement major CMN/ZMF extensions (Plugins)

Even though CMN/ZMF is a very rich product, there are still quite a few concepts and features that are still missing in CMN/ZMF. Concepts and features that are on various CMN/ZMF enhancement lists for many years (even more then a decade …), and which have been asked by many CMN/ZMF customers.

The solutions that fit into category Plugins are to be considered as powerful software packages to implement major CMN/ZMF extensions, the complexity of coding behind is sometimes compares to the selectable CMN/ZMF options (like M&R, DB2-option, IMS-option, even ERO).