PRODUCT BRIEF: CA FAQS PRODUCTION CONTROL SYSTEM FOR Z/VSE CA FAQS Production Control System for z/vse r5.0 CA FAQS PRODUCTION CONTROL SYSTEM FOR Z/VSE IS A BUSINESS PROCESS EVENT-DRIVEN SCHEDULER THAT EFFECTIVELY CONTROLS THE WORK FLOW IN A Z/VSE DATA CENTER. BY RESPONDING TO BUSINESS EVENTS IN REAL TIME, REDUCING DEPENDANCY ON OPERATOR ACTION AND MANAGING RESOURCES, IT SUPPORTS YOUR ABILITY TO MAXIMIZE SYSTEM THROUPUT AND MEET YOUR SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENTS. Overview Benefits CA Advantage Business operates in real time and users expect immediate results. There is little room for error when it comes to processing data and trans - actions. To address the challenges of managing business system technologies, you need an agile, self managed, business-centric IT environment. This means you must proactively manage the interdependencies between thousands of processing requests that cross your enterprise at any point in time. CA FAQS Production Control System for z/vse (CA FAQS PCS for z/vse) is a mainframe-hosted, event driven workload automation solution that: Increases operational efficiency Improves productivity Increases availability of critical business services Reduces costs and lowers risk For more than two decades, CA has designed, deployed and managed production workloads on z/vse systems, its predecessors and other operating systems. CA FAQS PCS for z/vse efficiently helps you manage your production work load for better business results. As part of CA s vision for Enterprise IT Management (EITM), it contributes to your organization s ability to unify and simplify overall IT management.
CA FAQS Production Control System for z/vse Controls Event-Driven Workloads on z/vse Systems in Real Time Reliable and timely information processing on your z/vse system is essential in today s business environment, and to effectively compete you must go beyond the necessary batch reports and system back-ups and provide real-time response to demands for data and transactions. CA FAQS PCS for z/vse fulfills that business need by helping you manage the work flow on your z/vse system. Key Capabilities SIMPLE ONLINE INTERFACE Manage your production schedule from a simple online interface that can be accessed from CICS, or VTAM. If you are also running CA FAQS Automated Systems Operation for z/vse you may also manage and monitor your schedule from CMS, ICCF or CA FAQS ASO for z/vse. Regardless of which interface you choose, the look and feel of the interface is the same. MULTILPE Z/VSE SUPPORT You can control the work flow and schedule events on all your z/vse systems from a single schedule. This simplifies and unifies the activity on all your z/vse systems whether they run standalone, under z/vm or in an LPAR. The schedule can be maintained and monitored from any of the available interfaces within the entire complex of z/vse systems. EVENT FORECASTING The online and batch forecasting programs help you resolve bottle necks in your production schedules. EXTENSIVE ACCOUNTING AND AUDITING FACILITIES CA FAQS PCS for z/vse maintains an audit history of all activity and an accounting history of all events. The accounting history provides valuable input into the forecasting facility. ENHANCED JOB CONTROL Procedural Control Language enables you to run only those business processes that are needed in a specific situation. Jobs are automatically tailored to the current business environment prior to execution. The CA CIS for z/vse GSS REXX programming language and the Execution Control Language allow you to make business decisions based on the conditions encountered during execution and can dynamically alter the work flow to meet your business needs. CA FAQS PCS for z/vse requires CA CIS for z/vse, a set of common utilities that support and add value to CA FAQS PCS. A ROBUST CALLABLE APPLICATION INTERFACE This easy to use, yet robust, application program interface can be called from both batch and online programs. It integrates CA FAQS PCS for z/vse directly with your application program making a true component of your business process and enhancing automated control of your day to day work flow. BATCH CONTROL OF CICS ONLINE RESOURCE AND PROCESSES You can control your CICS resources and process them directly from batch applications or through the CA CIS for z/vse GSS REXX ADDRESS instruction, which allows specific commands to be passed to CICS. This avoids resource conflicts and allows your batch and online applications to work together seamlessly as a unified business process. 2 PRODUCT BRIEF: CA FAQS PRODUCTION CONTROL SYSTEM FOR Z/VSE
CICS functions enable you to: Open or close VSAM files Open or close DL/I databases Pass CEMT commands to CICS Initiate non terminal CICS transactions Initiate simple terminal transactions CHECK RESOURCE AVAILABILITY PRIOR TO SCHEDULING EVENTS Not all resources can be shared between processes. This feature ensures that all resources are available before a job is started thus avoiding problems due to resource unavailability. Events can also be triggered by opening or closing a data set resource. EFFECTIVELY CONTROL MANUAL AND EXTERNAL EVENTS Manual and unscheduled events are managed though the work and data station facilities of CA FAQS PCS for z/vse. QUICKLY BYPASS COMPLETED JOB STEPS AFTER A FAILURE If a failure occurs, the Restart Facility makes it easy to restart an event at a point other than the beginning. What s New in CA FAQS PCS for z/vse r5.0 REDESIGNED EVENT FILE PDS The Event PDS SYS$EVT has been redesigned to allow direct access to events. The previous design was based on a sequential access approach that hindered performance for users having thousands of events. Now events can be accessed directly without the overhead of a sequential scan. The event maintenance screens use this direct access to display the information needed quickly. Unless you use the Sort option, you can find any event quickly. INCREASED FLEXIBILITY OF EVENT NAMING In the previous releases of CA FAQS PCS for z/vse, you could only have one event with the same name. Now you can use the group name to distinguish events. For example, an event named BACKUP can exist in the PAYROLL group, the ACCOUNT group or any other group. This feature allows better event management and event name flexibility. JOB STATUS SCREENS The new Job Status screens display event data such as return codes and additional information about the status of each event. These screens have the same functionality as the event maintenance screens and can be used to follow events in the production environment. AUTOMATIC REFRESH CAPABILITY FOR EVENT AND JOB STATUS DISPLAY The automatic refresh capability allows you to set the event maintenance and job status screens in automatic redisplay mode so that the screens will redisplay at user-defined intervals. NEW SORTING OPTIONS FOR EVENT AND JOB STATUS DISPLAYS When using the SORT command, you can now sort the event maintenance and job status screens by specifying any of the event selection fields shown at the top of the screens. PRODUCT BRIEF: CA FAQS PRODUCTION CONTROL SYSTEM FOR Z/VSE 3
MAXIMIZE RUN TIME The Maximum Run Time feature allows you to set a time interval for each event. If this time interval elapses after the event has started executing, then messages are displayed on the console. CA TOP SECRET FOR Z/VSE SUPPORT If you have activated CA Top Secret for z/vse support in the CA CIS for z/vse GSS subsystem, you can control user access to the panels in CA FAQS PCS for z/vse. For increased security and control of your CA FAQS PCS for z/vse environment, users must sign on to CA Top Secret for z/vse (if it is active), when using the VTAM interface. EVENT NAME EXCEPTION DURING EVLOAD When executing an EVLOAD in JCLEVNT, you can tell PCS to exclude events. This feature supports wild cards. ADDED MACHINE NAME TO ONLINE DISPLAYS CA FAQS PCS for z/vse panels. The machine name is now displayed on all WILD CARD SUPPORT FOR DATA SET NAMES You can now use wild cards when specifying data sets for logging and exclusion. CA FAQS PCS for z/vse has moved much of the information about data sets to virtual storage; consequently, data sets are processed more quickly. NEW NOTES AREAS ADDED Notes have been added to the Forecast Calendar so that you can explain why certain dates or days have been excluded. Notes have also been added to the Global Variable panel to explain how the global variable is used in the production environment. CA Advantage The many enhancements in this latest product release, combined with CA s long history of managing workloads on many platforms, makes CA FAQS PCS for z/vse the preeminent scheduling tool for managing business processes in the z/vse environment. The Enterprise IT Management Vision (EITM) As a key component in production control and system management, CA FAQS PCS for z/vse is also an integral part of the CA's EITM vision to unify and simplify enterprise IT management. To maximize the performance, reliability and efficiency of your overall IT environment means tightly integrating the control and management of additional functions, including operations, storage, security, life cycle and services management. CA s comprehensive portfolio of modular IT management solutions helps the enterprise unify, simplify and secure IT to better manage risk, costs and service helping ensure that IT meets the business needs of the enterprise. 4 PRODUCT BRIEF: CA FAQS PRODUCTION CONTROL SYSTEM FOR Z/VSE
Next Steps CA FAQS PCS for z/vse streamlines workflows to dramatically improve the automation and monitoring of your business processes that run on a z/vse system. CA continues to advance CA FAQS PCS for z/vse as a comprehensive production control solution, delivering new enhancements and integration with other CA products, continuing to seek opportunities to add value for our customers and partners. To learn more, and see how CA software solutions enable organizations to unify and simplify IT management for better business results, visit ca.com/products. Copyright 2007 CA. All rights reserved. All trademarks, trade names, service marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies. PB05CAPGFAQS01E MP320220807 Learn more about how CA can help you transform your business at ca.com