Phoenix Software Provides Day-One Support of z/OS 3.1
Phoenix Software Product Releases: September 2023
We at PSI take great pride in providing day-one support for a new release of the IBM z/OS operating system. This year was no different. Phoenix products went GA on September 29th, the same day as z/OS 3.1.
This year's releases included JES3plus V1R3, a derivative work based on IBM's z/OS® JES3, and (E)JES V6R3 our modern z/OS JESplex management tool among others.
"We have amazing customers." said Ed Jaffe, Chief Technology Officer at Phoenix Software International, "Whether they are submitting enhancement requests, participating in our Early Test Program, or are members of our JES3plus Customer Advisory Council, they are helping to drive the future of our products. We understand that our customers, not necessarily our developers, know what is most important to their businesses and that is obvious in the enhancements that you see in our products."
JES3plus V1R3
Functional Highlights:
- Support for Job Correlator — Needed by various functions that submit and monitor jobs. In particular, custom HTTP headers such as X-IBM-User-Correlator or X-IBM-JCL-Symbol-name can now be used when submitting a job from z/OSMF. This removes a documented JES3 restriction found in IBM's z/OS Management Facility Programming Guide.
- Support for the SEGMENT= and SPIN= JCL keywords on individual SYSOUT DDs — This function is still being validated and is expected to be delivered later this year via the service stream. It removes two documented JES3 restrictions found in IBM's z/OS MVS JCL User's Guide and Reference.
- More Efficient Job Submit Processing — For decades, the SPOOL data set created by the job performing a submit through an internal reader was copied to a new SPOOL data set and the original data set was purged. Beginning with this release, the SPOOL data set created by the submitter is used in-place without being copied or purged. This should make job submit faster, especially when many records are involved.
- More Efficient SPOOL Utilization by ASR Control Blocks — In this release, a previously-reserved field in each ASR entry now keeps track of the number of contiguous blocks represented by the entry. Thus, a single ASR entry can now represent an entire track group. This enhancement can dramatically reduce the number of ASR control blocks on SPOOL for jobs that discard many contiguous blocks.
(E)JES® V6R3
Functional Highlights:
The following new tabular displays have been added:
- Couple Data Sets Display — The Couple Data Sets display helps display information about system data sets that control sysplex operation and communication.
- System Events Display — The System Events display helps you understand various instrumented system events occurring over time across the sysplex.
- System Parameters Display — The System Parameters display shows the various parameters used to initialize the systems in your sysplex.
- XCF Members Display — The XCF Members display helps display information about XCF groups and their members known to the sysplex.
z/OSMF Installation Workflow Enhancements for JES3plus V1R3 and (E)JES® V6R3
As one of the first ISV's to support a z/OSMF driven installation, we continue to make this a priority and add enhancements whenever possible. This release of both JES3plus and (E)JES are no exception.
Functional Highlights:
- Beginning with this release of both products, the workflow now provides assistance with the HTTP Batch download method. Previously, the workflow provided no assistance for completing this step.
- Additionally, in this release of (E)JES, we have automated the Dynamic Definition Steps in Chapter 7 by adding a new step at the beginning of this chapter that prompts for all necessary input variables on one screen. Once that step has been satisfied, the workflow will automatically execute the four steps that follow, one after the other.
FALCON® z/OS Release 26.3 / z/VSE Release 32.3
Functional Highlights:
- Increased Maximum Record Length — In prior FALCON releases, the maximum record length for a batch was 1024 bytes (or 1K). In this release it has been increased to 1536 bytes (or 1.5K).
Phoenix Software Product Releases: September 2023
Product downloads are available to customers via the Phoenix Software International Support portal.
Visit: https://phoenixsoftware.com/support.htm#downloads.
New product releases include:
- (E)JES V6R3
- CONDOR® z/OS 26.3 z/VSE 32.3
- CYGNET® z/OS 26.3 z/VSE 32.3
- Entrypoint® 16.4
- FALCON® z/OS 26.3 z/VSE 32.3
- JES3plus V1R3
- PHX-BDT® V1R3