BMC Control-M 7: A Journey from Traditional Batch Scheduling to Workload Automation

Errata type: typo | Page number: Preface (page 18) | Errata date: 19-2-2013

The 1st paragraph reads:
Control-M  is one of the world's most widely used enterprise class batch workload 
automation product produced by BMC Software. With a strong knowledge of 
Control-M, you will be able to use the tool to meet ever growing batch processing 
needs. However, there has been no book that can guide you to implement and manage 
this powerful tool successfully until now. With this book, you will quickly master 
Control-M, and be able to call yourself "a Control-M" specialist!


The 4th paragraph reads:
You will start off with the history and concept of batch processing and how recently 
it got evolved into workload automation, and then get an understanding of how 
Control-M fits into the big picture. Then we will look more in depth at the technical 
details of the tool - How to plan, install, use, as well as manage a Control-M 
environment, and finally look at how to leverage the tool to meet the already 
sophisticated and ever growing business demand. Throughout the book, you will 
learn important concepts and features of Control-M through detailed explanations 
and examples, as well as learn from the author's experience, over many 
years. By the end of the book, you will be set up to work efficiently with this tool, 
and also understand how to utilize the latest features of Control-M.

Errata type: typo | Preface (page 19) | Errata date: 19-2-2013

The 4th paragraph reads:
Chapter 4,  Creating and  Managing Batch Flows with  Control-M GUI , looks at the 
important job scheduling concepts of Control-M in depth and applies them by 
defining some simple jobs in Control-M Desktop, and manages them using the 
Control-M/EM GUI client. Then it goes one step further by defining a complete batch 
to meet a scheduling requirement.

The 5th paragraph reads:
Chapter 5,  Administrating the Control-M Infrastructure , starts with installing the 
additional Control-M components – BIM and Forecast, followed by discussing the 
tasks involved in expanding and updating the Control-M environment. It talks about 
the different methods of performing regular installation tasks, such as applying 
fix packs and installing Control-M/EM GUI clients, as well as demonstrates how 
to define Agentless remote hosts in both Linux and Windows environments. 
Towards the end, it explains how to perform some must-know administration 
tasks, including stop/start Control-M components, define Control-M/EM user 
authorizations, and customize the GUI.

Errata type: typo | Preface (page 20) | Errata date: 19-2-2013

The 1st paragraph reads:
Chapter 7,  Beyond Everyday  Administration, focuses on the administration side of 
Control-M but in more depth. It starts with looking at the command-line utilities 
that can be used to affect the active environment. More importantly, it reviews the 
different security options provided by Control-M, as well as demonstrates the 
Control-M mirroring and failover. After securing the environment, it takes us 
to the new level by perfecting the Control-M environment.

The 2nd paragraph reads:
Chapter 8,  Road to  Workload Automation , makes a number of improvements to the file 
processing job flow from both the integration and performance aspects, by using the 
cutting-edge Control-M add-on features. These include enabling the job to have 
exposure to external applications, by using the BPI web service interface, integration 
with ESB with BPI web service and message queue jobs, rendering the processing 
truly parallel, and implementing load balancing. Towards the end, it turns our 
processing flow into workloads, and taps into the power of cloud computing for 
limitless processing.

Errata type: typo | Preface (page 21) | Errata date: 19-2-2013

The 2nd last paragraph reads:
To send us general feedback, simply send an e-mail to feedback@packtpub.com, 
and mention the book title in the subject of your message.

Errata type: typo | Preface (page 25) | Errata date: 19-2-2013

The 1st heading reads:
An introduction to batch processing

The last paragraph, 2nd last sentence reads:
In this manner, lots of data could be processed at once, rather 
than frequently re-stacking the program card multiple times for each small amount of 
input data. 

Errata type: typo | Preface (page 27) | Errata date: 19-2-2013
The 1st pargraph reads:
Traditionally Batch jobs are known to process large amounts of data at once. 
Therefore, it is not practical to expect the output to be given immediately. But there is
still a predefined deadline for every batch processing, either it is set by the business 
requirement (also known as  SLA – Service Level Agreement)  or simply because it 
needs to finish so that the dependent batch processing tasks can start. For example, 
a group of batch jobs of an organization need to generate the payroll data and send 
it to the bank by Monday 5am, so the bank can have enough time to process it and 
ensure the funds get transferred to each of the organization's employee's account by 
8am Tuesday morning.

Errata type: typo | Preface (page 28) | Errata date: 19-2-2013
The 1st paragraph, last sentence reads:
CICS ( Customer Information  Control System)  is a typical mainframe 
application designed for handling high-volume online transactions. On the other 
hand, there is personal computer started to gain popularity which designed and 
optimised to work primarily in interactive mode.

The 2nd pargraph reads:
In reality, we often see that batch processing and transaction processing share 
the same computing facility and data source in an enterprise class computing 
environmnet. As interactive processing aims at providing a fast response for user 
requests generated on a random basis, in order to ensure that there are sufficient 
resources available on the system for processing such requests, the resource intensiv
batch jobs that used to occupy the entire computing facility 24/7 had to be set to run
only during a time frame when user activities were low, which at the time was is more
likely to be during night. This is why we often hear a more seasoned IT person with 
mainframe background call it an overnight batch.

Errata type: typo | Preface (page 29) | Errata date: 19-2-2013
The last bullet point reads:
7:00am: The system starts to get hit by online traffic again.

The 2nd last paragraph reads:
In this example, programs for batch mode processing are set to run only when online 
transactions are low. This allows online processing to have the maximum system 
resources during its peak hours. During online processing's off peak hours, batch 
jobs can use up the entire system to perform resource-intensive processing such as 
sales reconciliation or reporting.

Errata type: typo | Page 13 | Errata date: 19-2-2013

The 2nd paragraph reads:
The timeframe allocated for batch processing is called a  batch window.  The concept 
sounds simple, but there are many factors that need to be taken into consideration 
before defining the batch window. Those factors include what time the resource 
and input data will be available for batch processing, how much data needs to be 
processed each time, and how long the batch jobs will take to process them. In case 
the batch processing fails to complete within the defined time window, not only does
the expected batch output fail to be delivered on time, but the next day's online processing 
may also get affected. Here are some of the scenarios:

The 1st bullet point under the 2nd paragraph reads:
Online requests start to come in at its usual time, but the backend batch 
processing is still running. As the system resources such as CPU, memory, and 
IO are still occupied by the over-running batch jobs, the resource availability 
and system response time for online processing are significantly  impacted. As 
a result, online users see responses given slowly and get timeout errors.


The 3rd bullet point under the 2nd paragraph reads:
In extreme cases, online transactions are based on the data processed by the 
previously run batch. Therefore, the online transactions cannot start at all 
unless the previous batch processing is completed. This can happen with banks, 
as you often hear them say the bank cannot open tomorrow morning if the 
overnight batch fails.

Errata type: typo | Page 14 | Errata date: 19-2-2013

The 1st paragraph, 3rd sentence reads:
Using the online shopping example again; during the day, orders get generated 
by online users. 

The 1st paragraph, last sentence reads:
With event-triggered batch processing, the online business is able 
to offer a customer a near instant response on their order status, and therefore, provide a 
better shopping experience. 

The 3rd paragraph, last sentence reads:
However, it's yet to completely replace batch processing. 

Errata type: typo | Page 16 | Errata date: 19-2-2013

The 1st paragraph reads:
Whether running the business process in real time or batches, the system designer 
should take many factors into consideration, such as:

The 2nd paragraph, last sentence reads:
Large orgnisations today are still investing in batch processing and continuously trying to 
figure out how to make it run better.

The last paragraph, first two sentence read:
To understand batch processing further we need to begin from its source - mainframe computers. Job  Control Language ( JCL ) was introduced as a basic tool 
on the mainframe computers for defining how a batch program should be executed. 
A JCL is considered to be a job, also called a job  card  (name inherited from 
punched cards).

Errata type: typo | Page 19 | Errata date: 19-2-2013

The 1st bullet point reads:
By 12:00am, there are ten orders generated in total. Program  PROCESS_ORDER  
is set to trigger at this time of the day to process them. For each order, the 
program scans the inventory to make sure each item on the order is in stock 
and creates the file called  daily build list.

The 2nd bullet point reads:
According to the daily build list, the program  MAIL_CONFIRMED_ORDER 
sends out an e-mail to each customer to confirm if his or her order is ready to 
be built.


The 4th bullet point reads:
Program GENERATE_BACKORDER_LIST  will create a list of orders that 
cannot be built due to missing parts; the list also gets stored in a file called 
backorder list.

Errata type: typo | Page 20 | Errata date: 19-2-2013

The 1st paragraph, 2nd sentence reads:
Jobs are scheduled o that they can run immediately one after 
another, and keep the computing resource occupied without idle time.

The 1st paragraph, last sentence reads:
Using our online computer shop example by breaking down processing into tasks and 
running tasks that are not interdependent in parallel, we can s ignificantly shorten the 
processing time.

In the screenshot, the left-most vertical heading reads "35 hours to process" and Step 2 in teh 1st block reads: Send Order confirmation email

Errata type: typo | Page 21 | Errata date: 19-2-2013

The 1st paragraph reads:
As the modern computing batch processing is far more complicated than just simply 
feeding punched cards in sequence into the mainframe as it was in old days, a lot 
more factors need to be taken into consideration when running batch processing due 
to its time consuming and task-intensive nature.Batch scheduling tools were designed to 
automate such processing tasks, thus reducing the possibility of human mistake and 
security concerns.

The 1st bullet point in the last paragraph reads:
What, how, and where to trigger – The executable program's physical location on the  
file system

Errata type: typo | Page 23 | Errata date: 19-2-2013
The 2nd paragraph, 1st sentence reads:
A many to one relationship refers to one child job that depends on many parent jobs (for example, to perform an end of job stream backup or data transmission). 

Errata type: typo | Page 24 | Errata date: 19-2-2013

The 1st paragraph reads:
Driven by business and user demand, more sophisticated features have been provided 
with modern scheduling tools apart from automating the execution of batch jobs, 
such as:


The 3rd bullet point in the first paragraph reads:
Intelligent scheduling – decision making based on pre-defined conditions

The last paragraph reads:
Event-driven batch jobs are defined to run only when the expected external event 
has occurred. In order to have this capability, special interfaces are developed 
within a batch scheduling tool to detect such an event. Detecting a file's creation 
or arrival is a typical interface for event trigger batch. Some batch schedulers also 
provide their own application programming interface  ( API) or have the ability to 
act as a web service or through message queue to accept an external request. The 
user needs to specify beforehand what event to trigger, which job or action within the batch 
scheduling tool, and during what time frame. So during the defined time frame, the 
scheduler will listen to the event and trigger the corresponding batch job or action 
accordingly. External events can sometimes be unpredictable and this can happen at 
any time. The batch scheduling tools also need to have the ability to limit the number 
of concurrent running event-triggered batch jobs to prevent the machine from 
overloading during peak time periods.

Errata type: typo | Page 25 | Errata date: 19-2-2013

The 1st paragraph, last sentence reads:
With this feature, a lot of the repetitive manual actions for handling events can be automated, 
such as:

The 2nd paragraph reads:

This feature avoids the human response time for handling such tasks and 
minimized the possible human mistakes. It significantly contributes to shortening 
the overall batch processing time. However, this is not a one-size-fits-all approach, 
as there are chances that the events really need a human decision to take place. This 
approach can free the user from repetitive tasks, but can also increase maintenance 
overhead, such as each time when the output of a program is changed, the condition 
for automatic reaction more likely needs to be changed accordingly. 

The last paragraph, 2nd last sentence reads:
Batch scheduling tools eliminated this concern by providing additional security features from the batch 
processing prospective, that is, providing user authentication for accessing the batch 
scheduling console, and grouping users into different levels of privileges according to 
their job role. 

Errata type: typo | Page 26 | Errata date: 19-2-2013

The 1st paragraph, 1st sentence reads:
In recent years,  IT has become more and more sophisticated to meet the ever-growing business requirements.

Errata type: typo | Page 27 | Errata date: 19-2-2013
The last paragraph, 1st sentence reads:
Most of these machines will have their own batch jobs running to serve a 
particular need.

Errata type: typo | Page 32 | Errata date: 19-2-2013

The 1st paragraph reads:
When jobs are running on different platforms, they can be monitored on a machine by machine basis only. The user can see which job completed and which job failed, but unable to 
see everything as a complete business process flow. Many business processes today 
require thousands of jobs to complete and these jobs may be spread on hundreds 
of machines. It is not practical for operators to track each step of the batch flow by 
logging on every machine that is involved in the processing, not only because this 
approach is labor intensive, but also because different skill sets are required for 
people who are in charge for batch jobs running on each different environment. 
Also, it is difficult to find out what the consequences would be if one job needs to be 
started late or if some jobs need to be disabled for a given day.

Errata type: typo | Page 33 | Errata date: 19-2-2013
The 2nd paragraph reads:
Just think from the maintenance point as well, all these failures were caused by a 
rename to the CSV files. Without seeing the whole picture, the person who made the 
modification did not know there's a downflow reporting job, or that many other parties 
outside his department may rely on these files for further processing.

The last paragraph, 3rd sentence reads:
Without an overall view of the entire batch environment from a 
business process point of view, along with a lack of standardization and documentation, 
IT will become a hindrance to  the business transition. 


Errata type: typo | Page 34 | Errata date: 19-2-2013
The 3rd paragraph, 2nd last sentence reads:
Once the job is submitted, the centralized 
scheduling platform will wait for the response from the remote host and, in the 
meantime, submit other jobs that are meeting their scheduling criteria.

Errata type: typo | Page 35 | Errata date: 19-2-2013
The 1st paragraph, 3rd last sentence reads:
In this case, jobs can be triggered immediately when its 
parent job(s) are completed.


The last paragraph reads:
We often hear from more senior IT people talking about their "good old days" - when batch operators had a list of all jobs expected to be executed on the day, together with a list 
of machines where these jobs were located. They had to manually logon each machine 
to check the previous job's completion state, then logon another machine to execute 
the next job,  Centralized scheduling allowed users to monitor and manage cross 
platform batch jobs from a single point of control. Users no longer need to estimate 
which job should run next by looking at their spreadsheet, because jobs that belong 
to a single business process are grouped into a visual batch flow. Users can see 
exactly where the execution is up to in the batch flow. Centralized scheduling also 
provides a uniform job management interface. The people in charge of managing 
the batch jobs no longer need to have in-depth knowledge of the job's running 
environment to be able to perform simple tasks such as rerun a job, delay a job's 
execution, or deploy a new job.

Errata type: typo | Page 39 | Errata date: 19-2-2013
The 1st paragraph reads:
Based on what we know so far, in this section we will be looking at where batch 
scheduling is going in the very short term future.

The 2nd paragraph, 1st sentence reads:
As discussed earlier in this chapter, for many years, batch scheduling was 
primarily static scheduling.


The 3rd paragraph, last sentence reads:
Even if these idle machines are allowed to be used for temporary batch job 
execution; it is not worth the effort to re-configure the batch jobs to run on these 
hosts only as a one off thing.

Errata type: typo | Page 41 | Errata date: 19-2-2013
The 1st paragraph reads, 1st sentence:
Virtualization technology has become common in IT environments 
in the recent years. 

Errata type: typo | Page 43 | Errata date: 19-2-2013
The 2nd paragraph reads, last sentence:
This system may low rapid changes to be made, but users are more likely to suffer poor performance when it comes to processing large amounts of data at once.


The spelling in the tip box is Wikipedia and NOT Wikipida.

The last paragraph reads, 3rd last sentence:
The same idea can also be applied to a data backup process.

Errata type: typo | Page 44 | Errata date: 19-2-2013
The 1st paragraph reads, last sentence:
A request can be sent to trigger the batch processing through web 
services or messaging queue when needed, then the batch scheduler runs the batch 
processing in black box and return the desired outcome to the requester.


Errata type: typo | Page 45 | Errata date: 19-2-2013
The last paragraph reads:
Later on in this book, you will see how the challenges are addressed and how the 
ideal workload automation concept is achieved in the amazing feature of Control-M. 
Stay tuned! We are just about to let the real game begin!

Errata type: typo | Page 48 | Errata date: 19-2-2013

The 3rd paragraph, 2nd last sentence reads:
In the recent years, BMC software made Control-M its BSM 
strategy by integrating Control-M with BMC Atrium  Configuration Management 
Database (CMDB).

Errata type: typo | Page 49 | Errata date: 19-2-2013


The last paragraph, last sentence reads:
In the evolutionary release of version 7, Control-M 
enhanced its features by adopting the workload automation concept to become more 
resource-aware and gain ability to manage dynamic workload in real-time and take 
advantage of virtualization and cloud computing.

Errata type: typo | Page 49 | Errata date: 19-2-2013


The 5th bullet point reads:
According to the predefined rules, automatically perform actions when 
a job execution event has occurred (for example, a job failed with a certain 
return code, or the job didn't run at the expected time)

Errata type: typo | Page 51 | Errata date: 19-2-2013


The 3rd paragraph, last sentence reads:
Let's begin with understanding some basic 
Control-M concepts and terms.


The last paragraph, 1st sentence reads:
As we discussed in the previous chapter, most batch jobs are not standalone. 


Errata type: typo | Page 54 | Errata date: 19-2-2013

The 1st paragraph, 1st sentence reads:
Control-M is well known for its powerful, post processing ability. In Control-M, post 
processing activities are the tasks to be performed automatically right after a job's 
completion.

The 2nd paragraph, last sentence reads:
The complexity of the heterogeneous batch environment is encapsulated 
to the people who manage the batch jobs, that is, without having platform-specific 
knowledge the user can define, monitor, and manage job executions on any of the 
supported systems through the centralized GUI front end in a uniform way.

Errata type: typo | Page 55 | Errata date: 19-2-2013

The 1st paragraph, last sentence reads:
Alternatively, users can manage jobs by exception, by using the 
Alert Window provided as part of the GUI Client.

Errata type: typo | Page 55 | Errata date: 19-2-2013

The 2nd paragraph, 2nd sentence reads:
It provides a uniform job editing interface to define and modify job 
definitions regardless of what operating system it is going to be running on. 

Errata type: typo | Page 58 | Errata date: 19-2-2013

The 2nd paragraph, 1st sentence reads:
In order to monitor and control components, firstly users need to define the 
manageable components into CCM and set the  Desired  State for each of them.

The last paragraph, 1st sentence reads:
The Reporting Facility is the key tool for extracting batch related information
from Control-M and analyzing the batch environment to support 
future decision making such as forecasting batch processing volume or planning and
optimising batch processing duration.

Errata type: typo | Page 59 | Errata date: 19-2-2013

The last paragraph, 2nd sentence reads:
This feature allows pre-defined reports to be 
produced automatically via Control-M when the pre-defined command line is 
scheduled as a job. 


Errata type: typo | Page 60 | Errata date: 19-2-2013

The 3rd paragraph, 2nd bullet point reads:
Constructing the command line execution for a particular application requires 
sophisticated arguments, some of which are only determined at run 
time, for example, locate and process a randomly generated file.

The last paragraph reads:
As an enterprise wide centralized scheduling platform, apart from scheduling 
standard jobs on the systems listed in supported platforms, with additional softwa
package's support (Control-M Control Modules), Control-M can automate special 
job types such as file transfer, web services, messaging, java applications, as well as being able to expand its schedule capability into major applications such as SAP, Oracle 
E-Business Suit, Informatica, and PeopleSoft.

Errata type: typo | Page 62 | Errata date: 19-2-2013

The 1st paragraph, 1st sentence reads:
The purpose of Control Modules is to make application specific job scheduling 
easy, therefore necessary parts of the processing that run in those applications 
can be integrated with the traditional type batch jobs as much as possible to allow the 
end-to-end business process to be presented in Control-M.

Errata type: typo | Page 61 | Errata date: 19-2-2013

The last paragraph, last sentence reads:
 Reacting to each individual job failure with the same approach without seeing the bigger picture may not be the most effective way to ensure critical services meet their SLA.

Errata type: typo | Page 63 | Errata date: 19-2-2013

1st paragraph, 1st sentence reads:
Referring to the example we mentioned in the  Control-M/Forecast section, now the 15000 
interrelated jobs are designed to deliver 80 different business services. 


2nd paragraph, last sentence reads:
Batch Impact Manager also can trigger alerts and work in 
conjunction with BMC Remedy ITSM to automatically trigger an incident ticket.



3rd paragraph reads:
Batch Impact Manager uses job statistical information in reference to the sequence 
of job execution within the batch service to calculate how much a job's delay (or 
completion quicker than usual) can affect the completion time of the business service, 
as well as suggesting how quickly a failed job needs to be fixed in order to ensure the 
business service completes within its SLA.


Last paragraph reads:
When is the best time window to schedule an outage change on a production 
machine that will bring minimal impact to critical batch services? What is the actual 
business impact if the outage change did not finish within agreed change window? 
These are the type of questions regularly asked by change management. Given 
that business processes today commonly require task intensive and complex cross platform batch processing, it can be very challenging to provide an accurate answer 
to these kinds of questions. By performing an outage change without knowing these 
facts, an organization may be at the risk of suffering business loss and getting a penalty 
for missing the SLA.

Errata type: typo | Page 64 | Errata date: 19-2-2013

1st paragraph, 2nd sentence reads:
Once all the batch services CIs and 
associated computer resources CIs are imported into the CMDB, the people who do 
not have visibility to the batch environment (for example, the change manager) can 
look up the CI of the computer resource that requires the outage to find out if there 
are any batch service CIs associated with it, and are therefore able to estimate potential 
impacts to the business services.

2nd paragraph, 1st sentence reads:
By knowing the associated batch services, the users who have access to Control-M 
can use Control-M/Forecast to find out the best time window for an outage that 
will bring no impacts or minimal impact to the business service. 


Errata type: typo | Page 65 | Errata date: 19-2-2013

Last paragraph reads:
With this highly scalable architecture, users can choose to run their batch 
environment on a single scheduling engine or divide the workload onto multiple 
scheduling engines, but still have the ability to monitor and manage the jobs within a 
single GUI—as long as every Control-M/Server is configured to communicate with the 
same Control-M/Enterprise Manager.

Errata type: typo | Page 66 | Errata date: 19-2-2013

1st bullet point reads:
Naming Service

Errata type: typo | Page 67 | Errata date: 19-2-2013

2nd paragraph reads:
Control-M Configuration Server component was introduced in Control-M/
Enterprise Manager 6.3.01 as a background service to support CCM GUI front-end 
and perform backend administration tasks like cleaning historical data from the 
database on regular intervals.


3rd paragraph, last sentence reads:
Control-M/Enterprise Manager Configuration Agent does the start-up, shutdown, 
and recycle for these components according to the process Desired State flag that is 
set by the user in CCM.

Errata type: typo | Page 68 | Errata date: 19-2-2013


1st paragraph, 2nd sentence reads:
For GUI clients, it does most of the heavy lifting part of 
displaying jobs (reduce the workload on each GUI clients) as well as handling user 
requests that come from each active GUI client session. 


2nd paragraph, 2nd sentence reads:
The gateway process enables the communication between 
the two layers so jobs can be displayed on GUI clients in real time and user actions 
can be immediately passed to Control-M/Server.

3rd paragraph reads:
A dedicated gateway process is required to be defined for each Control-M/Server 
to handle the communication. 


4th paragraph reads:
The  Control-M/Enterprise Manager GUI Client provides an alert window for the 
user to track exceptions in the batch environment. Such exceptions can be a job's 
failure, a job has been running too long, or Control-M/Agent has gone unavailabe. 
The alert information gets transmitted from Control-M/Server to Control-M/
Enterprise Manager by the gateway process. The global Alert Server is in charge for 
processing and presenting these alert notifications.

5th paragraph reads:
In a multi Control-M/Server environment, jobs residing in different Control-M/
Servers might be related and to be executed in a pre-defined log ical order. the Global 
Condition Server handles the job dependencies between jobs running on different 
datacenters (Control-M/Servers).

Errata type: typo | Page 69 | Errata date: 19-2-2013

1st paragraph, 1st two sentences read:
In Control-M, a job condition is a string defined as part of the definition and the 
Global conditions are distinguished from normal conditions by global condition 
prefix. Users needs to predefine the condition prefix, as well as its source datacenter 
and destination. 

Last paragraph, last sentence reads:
Control-M/Server's built-in command 
line and menu driven utilities can be used as an alternative for job monitoring and 
management when Control-M/Enterprise Manager is temporarily unavailable.

Errata type: typo | Page 69 | Errata date: 19-2-2013

1st paragraph, 1st sentence reads:
SL process is one of the most critical processes in Control-M/Server.

4th paragraph reads:
Apart from relying on Control-M/Agents to provide job updates in real time, TR 
process also performs a Track All periodically to all running jobs.  This feature 
is to manage cases where job status updates are not received due to connection 
with Control-M/Agent being temporarily lost or TR process (or Control-M/Server) 
being down just at the time when the original job status updates were sent from 
Control-M/Agent.

5th paragraph, last sentence reads:
It also maintains the communication with Control-M/Agents—
checks if they are available or not, and update the status into Control-M/Server's job 
execution node availability record.


Errata type: typo | Page 72 | Errata date: 19-2-2013

2nd paragraph reads:
Firstly, it is in charge of generating information to be sent to Control-M/Enterprise 
Manager reflex active batch workload status changes happened in the Control-M/
Server. On the other hand, it also passes requests from Control-M/Enterprise 
Manager such as the user requests initiated from GUI Clients or when a global condition 
has been newly created.


3rd paragraph, 3rd sentence reads:
From the  user's point of view, they may obtain 
better response time during peak usage when multiple CS processes are presented.

4th paragraph, last sentence reads:
The LG process handles these requests by triggering 
the actual process residing on the Control-M server and sending the execution result 
back to Control-M/Agent through the NS process.


5th paragraph reads:
The  WD process can do many different things, they are all optional.

Errata type: typo | Page 73 | Errata date: 19-2-2013

1st Paragraph reads:
Thirdly, the WD process performs Control-M/Server User Exits. We will introduce 
"User Exits" in Chapter 6 ,  Advanced Batch Scheduling and Management.

2nd Paragraph reads:
The  RT process is also one of the most important processes within Control-M/Server 
however, it hardly requires our attention. It acts like a network router to reduce the 
number of communication channels between Control-M/Server processes, therefore 
reducing the complexity of Control-M/Server inter-process communication. It listens 
on an  Internal  Process Communication ( IPC ) port that allows all the Control-M/
Server processes we talked about to connect with each other.

3rd Paragraph reads:
The  CA process was introduced in Control-M 6.3.01. Its job role is similar to 
Control-M/Enterprise Manager Configuration Agent—to set the Control-M/Server 
Up or  Down according to the desired state set by user in CCM. Of course it only 
communicates with the "master" - SU process and lets it do the work of bring 
other processes up or down. It also retrieves Control-M/Agent status and sends the 
information to Control-M/Enterprise Manager to be displayed on CCM. It allows 
users to recycle Control-M/Agents and change their configurations through CCM.


4th Paragraph reads:
Control-M/Agent is a collection of processes that are constantly running on the job 
execution host to act on job submission requests from  Control-M/Server. Control-M/
Agent submits the actual executable program to operating system for execution, 
monitors the program execution, and provides the execution result back to 
Control-M/Server. Control-M/Agent is also the base for Control Modules, as well as 
handling the communication between Control-M/Server and Agentless remote hosts.

Errata type: typo | Page 74 | Errata date: 19-2-2013

3rd Paragraph reads:
Before version 6.2.01, Control-M/Agent on the Unix/Linux systems relied on the
operating system's INETD daemon for listening to server-to-agent communication. 
For each request that comes from Control-M/Server, the INETD process will create a 
new instance of the AG process to handle it.

4th Paragraph reads:
We can tell the purpose of this process from its name—tracking job status. During 
jobs running, a record of each job is created within Control-M/Agent. The TR 
process is in charge for monitoring the actual job process and updating the status 
record. For completed jobs, the TR process will acknowledge Control-M/Server and 
mark the corresponding status record as completed on the Agent side.


5th Paragraph reads:
The TR process also performs post processing related to job's output file, by scannin
the file and searching for required strings for which Control-M/Server will later trigger 
post processing events.

6th Paragraph reads:
The AR process is activated only when persistent connection mode is used. In a 
persistent mode, the AR process listens to the Server-to-Agent port and maintains 
the connection with Control-M/Server. Once a request is received, AR will route the 
request to the AG process. It also listens on requests from the AT process and routes 
them back to the job request's source— the Control-M/Server.

Errata type: typo | Page 75 | Errata date: 19-2-2013

1st Paragraph reads:
As we mentioned while introducing Control-M/Server's LG process, there are a 
number of  Control-M/Server command line utilities that are allowed to be invoked 
from Control-M/Agent. The UT process is in charge for processing and submitting such 
utility requests from Control-M/Agent to  Control-M/Server.

3rd Paragraph reads:
From the user's point of view, defining and monitoring jobs running on an Agentless 
Remote Host has very little difference as compared to working with Control-M/
Agent hosts. From a management point of view, the connection status of an Agentless 
Remote Host can be monitored from CCM. Control-M also allows users to convert a 
Control-M/Agent host into an Agentless Remote Host or vice versa.

Errata type: typo | Page 76 | Errata date: 19-2-2013

2nd Paragraph reads:
In fact, all jobs submitted are handled by CMs. Normal jobs such as executing a 
command or running an executable are handled by the  OS CM, which comes as part of Control-M/Agent . The Control Modules we discussed earlier are the 
application CMs—CM for SAP, CM for Oracle E-Business Suite, CM for PeopleSoft, 
and so on. Application CMs are extensions of Control-M/Agent, and therefore have to be 
installed on top of Control-M/Agent. In other words, Agentless remote hosts cannot 
handle application CM jobs.

3rd Paragraph reads:
In an ideal environment, Control-M should be used as a centralized batch scheduling 
tool across the entire organization. These organizations are more likely to have a 
significant amount of complex batch processing running across multiple machines. 
To some extent, we could say that the higher the number of jobs that are running, the 
more complex they are (that is, dependencies, scheduling rules, and number of 
execution hosts involved), and the more RIO Control-M will be present. That's why 
we see so many Control-M customers that are banks, insurance companies, large 
manufacture companies, or telecommunication service providers that are Control-M customers.

Errata type: typo | Page 77 | Errata date: 19-2-2013
last 3 sentences read:
So if any errors occur while the job is running in production, the 
operators can perform a series of manual actions to the job or escalate the problem 
according to the instructions. Once the verification is done, th e schedulers will 
raise change request and schedule these jobs in production. Operators will then monitor and manage these jobs according to their severity and perform 
actions on failed jobs according to their runbook.

Errata type: typo | Page 78 | Errata date: 19-2-2013
1st pragrapgh, last sentence reads:
For failed jobs, the  Administrators  may have to work with the  Developers 
and  Schedulers for  RCA ( root  cause  analysis ), to fix the problem, and to provide a 
summary to  Incident  Management and the  Application owners.


3rd Paragraph, 2nd last sentence reads:
The 
primary location for Control-M-related information is the BMC software website and 
some online communities.

4th Paragraph, last sentence reads:
However, we will not be able to find any detailed  Control-M technical 
information from these pages because they are only available under a secured website 
which requires sign up with company support ID.

1st bullet point of last paragraph reads:
Control-X Yahoo group: The Control-X Yahoo group is the most well-known 
Control-M discussion group. It was founded in Nov 5, 1998. By the time this 
book is published, there will be over 1000 registered members. In order to 
join the group, one has to be a Yahoo member first then request access to 
the group. It normally takes two to three days for a new member's approval. 
URL: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Control-X/

Errata type: typo | Page 79 | Errata date: 19-2-2013

3rd bullet point at from the start of the page reads:
LinkedIn groups: There are a number of Control-M related groups 
on LinkedIn. We will find that a lot of members are either working in 
BMC software or working at a Control-M customer site. There are also 
recruitment people who have joined these groups and they occasionally   
make job related posts.

1st paragraph reads:
BMC Education Services offers various Control-M related courses and certification. 
There is a great chance that the training information has already been updated on 
the BMC site by the time this copy of the book is sold. Since the basic ideas and 
fundamentals are always the same, going through these courses will help us choose 
the right education path.

Last paragraph reads:
BMC only offers one Control-M related certification—BMC Certified 
Administrator—BMC Control-M for Distributed Systems 6.4. Certification is not a 
prerequisite for getting a Control-M-related job, but obtaining this certification will 
increase your career prospects and help you become more competitive in the field, 
especially if you are looking at working for a BMC partner company in certain 
countries. To prepare for the certification exam, you need to attend a BMC Education 
instructor-led training course first. The required courses for the exam are:

Errata type: typo | Page 80 | Errata date: 19-2-2013

1st paragraph reads:
The Boot Camp course is a five day instructor led course. It is well and truly a 
high-intensity course—9 to 11 hours a day, five days straight in a classroom with 
reading assignments for each evening. The class covers topics in the scheduling and 
administration courses plus hands-on labs for implementation related exercises. The 
certification exam is included in the book camp course. It is an online multiple choice 
exam, but it can only be taken at the local BMC training center. Students can take the 
exam twice within three weeks after the Boot Camp course, of course retests are only 
for those who failed the first time.

4th paragraph reads:
With every BMC Control-M customer, there will be potential for a Control-M related 
position. The role might focus more on the functionality side such as schedulers and 
operators, or could be more towards the administration side or doing project work. I 
have seen some companies that do not have a dedicated Control-M administrator 
or scheduler/operator. The administration role maybe handled by a DBA or Unix/
Windows system administrator. In this case if we are looking for a DBA or system 
administrator role with some Control-M skill on the side it would be really helpful.

Errata type: typo | Page 81 | Errata date: 19-2-2013

1st paragraph reads:
A lot of people who are working on Control-M today are from mainframe 
background. These people may not have the best knowledge about midrange 
environment or scripting language, but they would have a good understanding of 
 Control-M concepts. Since they have been working in the field  for a long time, they 
also have good relationships and connections within the field t o get the help they 
need. On the other hand, there are fresh men who come from a Linux/Windows 
or DBA background and this group of people are good at getting their way around the 
system with installations and are much more confinable with writing  scripts, but may 
find it hard to use the Control-M concepts and terminologies at  the very beginning.

2nd paragraph reads:
On the positive side, there is a reasonable amount of large organizations around the 
world who use Control-M and they treat Control-M as a very critical application. But 
this may create a problem too. It largely depends on our physical location. In some 
countries and cities there are more Control-M customers therefore more chance for 
a job vacancy. Whereas if someone lives in a city that has no Control-M customers 
at all, or only a very small number of Control-M customers, relocation needs to 
be considered. Final words for this topic are: just understand your own strength, be 
flexible, go with your passion and the job will come.


Errata type: typo | Page 81 | Errata date: 19-2-2013

1st paragraph reads:
We went through a lot of knowledge points during this chapter. In this chapter we 
looked at the features of Control-M, important concepts, and reviewed the architecture 
of Control-M. I hope you are not overwhelmed. As you start using and managing 
Control-M, you will become more familiar with the concepts and the architectural 
side of the things. And you might find it useful to re-visit this chapter later on during 
the installation of Control-M and troubleshooting issues.