Demanding in a Mainframe OPC Job via MQ

MQ can be used to initiate an OPC managed job. This process can be utilized by any application that has the ability to interface with the z/OS MQ subsystem, either as a local or remote queue manager (Clustered).

The process is quite simple to use – following are the requirements needed to enable this function within your application flow.

The following example uses IMJOB1 as an example of an OPC managed job that will be demanded in via this new MQ architecture.

·    Determine the spot within your current application flow where an OPC managed job should be demanded in. Your application needs to be already MQ enabled, or will need to have the MQ interface added.

·    The application will need to put a message to the MQ queue named “OPC_DEMAND_QUEUE”. This queue has a special task monitoring it, which controls the interface component between MQ and OPC.

·    The job that will be demanded in from OPC must be set up in OPC to have a special resource allocated to it. This resource is monitored (Trackers) by OPC, and when the resource is marked available it will indicate to OPC that the job is ready to be executed.  

·    The resource in OPC will follow the naming convention of:

MQ#ETT#$$$$$$$$ where

$$$$$$$$ is the OPC job being initiated.

Example: The resource to demand in job IMJOB1 thru the z/OS MQ subsystem would be called

MQ#ETT#IMJOB1.

·    Your application will need to be “RACF Enabled” to the OPC_DEMAND_QUEUE.

·    The message inserted to the MQ queue needs to be in the following format:

Cols 1-8 Name of job in OPC being requested (IMJOB1 for above example)

IMJOB1

·    The process monitoring this queue will submit a job a called ****MQDM, where **** is the MQ Queue Manager initiating the job. This is the job that will actually interface with OPC, and mark your application resource as being available. Then OPC submits that job.