The Symphony file

In a native IBM Workload Scheduler network, the Symphony file, also known as the production control file, is the daily plan. The Symphony file contains the scheduling information needed by the production control process named batchman. It is typically created during the pre-production phase before the start of each new planning period by a process named Jnextplan on the master domain manager.

At the start of each new planning period, the IBM Workload Scheduler network is restarted and the master domain manager sends a copy of the new Symphony file to each of its automatically linked agents and subordinate domain managers. The domain managers, in turn, send copies to their automatically linked agents and subordinate domain managers.

Once the network is started, scheduling messages such as job starts and completions are passed from the agents to their domain managers, through the parent domain managers to the master domain manager. The master domain manager then broadcasts the messages throughout the hierarchical tree to update the Symphony files of domain managers and fault-tolerant agents running in Full Status mode.

In an end-to-end with fault tolerance capabilities environment, the IBM Z Workload Scheduler engine, in its role as master domain manager of the distributed network, creates the Symphony file from the IBM Z Workload Scheduler current plan. In fact, the server parses the current plan, extracts all the job streams that were defined to run on fault-tolerant workstations, and copies them into the Symphony file of the next production cycle. It then sends the plan down to the first-level domain managers and to the directly connected fault-tolerant agents. In turn, each of these domain managers sends the plan to all of the subordinate workstations in its domain.

Standard agents that are directly connected to IBM Z Workload Scheduler receive a light version of the Symphony file containing only domain, workstation, and user definitions. The information on the jobs to run is sent directly by the IBM Z Workload Scheduler controller.

If you have only standard agents connected directly to IBM Z Workload Scheduler, and no fault-tolerant ones, the Symphony file each agent receives is further reduced to only the identification of OPCMASTER and of the agent itself.

During the production cycle, IBM Workload Scheduler reports the status of running and completed jobs back to the current plan for monitoring in the IBM Z Workload Scheduler engine. With this mechanism, you can define dependencies among IBM Z Workload Scheduler and IBM Workload Scheduler jobs.