Figure 1 shows the TIBCO Mainframe Service Tracker services on a mainframe system.
TIBCO Mainframe Service Tracker can supply enterprise-wide orchestration or workflow engines, Business Process Management (BPM), and other processes, with real-time information on the status, including the termination, of z/OS jobs. You can then manage critical scheduled tasks and Web services with the supplied tools.
The Tracker Server can inspect entries written to the JES log and forward them to intended recipients. The user’s inspection criterion is either a message identifier or character-string entry in the startup control member. The Tracker Server obtains the log-entry information through the z/OS JES WTO exit.
This capability is very useful for determining the health of a system and for being alerted of specific security breaches and key component failures. Only critical information can be filtered to real-time dashboards and business-event engines.
The Tracker Server can receive Alerts from any application, job, or process in z/OS and immediately forwards the contents to intended recipients. Notification between the application and the Tracker Server, which is through the subsystem calling method, is very efficient.
Typically, alerts are used when applications and processes must notify the parties concerned about an abnormal situation that could or has occurred within their environments. TIBCO Substation ES and TIBCO Object Service Broker use this method to alert system monitors about exceptions that occur during runtime operations. Information is filtered by the Tracker Server to real-time dashboards and business-event engines.
TIBCO Mainframe Service Tracker contains a simple single-call mechanism that event-enables your mainframe platform. Event Client users or TIBCO applications that incorporate this capability are called Tracker Event Clients. For details on Event Client samples that accompany the product, see
Chapter 4, Examples.
When you embed Tracker Event Client capabilities into applications, you enable those applications to send critical real-time information about z/OS tasks to other processes, including enterprise-wide orchestration, workflow, or business event engines. Other TIBCO mainframe products are also incorporating Event Client capabilities, which, when used with event-publishing capabilities, makes an entire event-decisive enterprise readily available.
A communication mechanism in the product enables applications to access information provided by the software. User or TIBCO applications that incorporate this capability are called Tracker Smart Clients. For details on a Smart Client sample that accompanies TIBCO Mainframe Service Tracker, see
Chapter 4, Examples.
Tracker Smart Clients can perform the same functions as Tracker Event Clients. In addition, when you embed Tracker Smart Client capabilities into applications, you enable those applications to communicate directly with the Tracker Server. After registering with the server, applications can subscribe to job monitoring. If a job-status subscription changes, an application is aware of the change and can react according to the end-of-job condition code available to the application.
By incorporating Tracker Smart Client features, you gain capabilities similar to that of job schedulers. You can easily enhance the capabilities to have event-driven preroutines and postroutines that can transmit related information to other enterprise-integration processes.