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ERO Concepts

With the ChangeMan ZMF Enterprise Release Option (ERO), an extension to ChangeMan ZMF, you manage changes as a release. A release represents a collection of ChangeMan ZMF simple change packages from any number of applications that must be installed at the same time.

Introduction

Releases allow you to manage high volumes of changes, as hundreds of simple change packages can be attached to any given release. ERO maintains relationships between components and the packages that comprise a release. ERO manages multiple releases in motion simultaneously.

ERO extends the capability of ChangeMan ZMF in the following ways:

Support for release management, with checkpoints along the way

With the flexibility of ERO architecture, you define releases with life cycles that correspond to your release migration paths. The ERO release life cycle is controlled by a set of rules to help manage and protect your production environment. ERO offers:

  • notifications at every major point in a release life cycle

  • built-in approval processes

  • query capabilities

  • library concatenation definitions for build processes

Consolidation of migration paths to an integrated environment

ERO provides specific development paths for releases that progressively consolidate package components into a single set of libraries. Concurrent development of these package components is detected when you consolidate libraries. The different versions of the same component have to be resolved to prevent overlays of the changes or loss of new function as these components move up the migration path.

Release audit capabilities, with automatic resolution of out-of-sync conditions

Similar to package audit in the base ChangeMan ZMF product, release audit evaluates relationships between different versions of the same component. It also evaluates relationships between components and other components they include, like copybooks and statically linked load modules. However, release audit is more comprehensive than package audit. Release audit examines:

  • components in libraries for a particular release

  • components in libraries in prior releases that will be installed sooner

  • components in baseline libraries

Automatic determination of copybook and load module concatenations for build processes

ERO gives you the flexibility to define copybook and load module concatenations for use in the build processes. These concatenations are pointed to by SYSLIB JCL statements. ERO manages these SYSLIB concatenations, even as library concatenations and contents in build jobs change when the schedule relationship between releases is changed. ERO also manages the SYSLIB concatenations when applications and packages are added to or removed from a release.

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