Introduction to NonStop Operations Management

Application Management
Introduction to NonStop Operations Management–125507
11-15
Analysis of Problem
In the new centralized environment, operations support is provided by the data center
personnel. Application users now have less flexibility and control but no longer have the
responsibility of staffing operations. The operators at each central site are now required
to know the application and all the peculiarities of its environment, such as the executor,
scheduler, and change control procedures. Predictably, this raises a new set of problems.
Analysis of Problem
Although consolidating the applications into three data centers created the potential for a
more efficient and organized environment, the data centers were unprepared for the new
applications they had to manage. This resulted in the following observations:
•
Operators were expected to enter data. For example, one of the applications that
must be run regularly requires data input. The operator must confirm certain
questions by entering “Y” for yes or “N” for no. The application checks for a “Y”
response and assumes “no” if anything else is entered.
In one situation, an operator working during the early morning shift entered a space
before entering “Y” and the response was misinterpreted by the application as “no.”
Since the error was not visually obvious, the operator had to contact the support
person at 5:00 a.m. to resolve the problem. Meanwhile the application was
unavailable for more than an hour.
Later, during the same run, while talking on the telephone, the operator entered a
dollar amount in excess of $27 million, which was grossly incorrect.
•
Applications did not follow any programming standards. For example, in another
incident, the same application prompted the operator on duty for a date in
DDMMYY format. The operator entered “23/01/1990” in what appeared to be an
error. The operator explained that although the instructions indicate a DDMMYY
format, he was told by the application user that he must enter the date in
DD/MM/YYYY format. As predicted, the application accepted the input.
During the same run, a file system error 13 was reported for the file
DATA.ACCLIB.RPTWK2. The error was caused by a missing “$” required at the
beginning of the file name. The operator was told that the error was normal and
expected and that this error would always be displayed. Another error occurred
when a sort was called up with no input. The sort ended with the error “Error no
records on file.” Logically, a sort would not be called to sort an empty file, but the
application was designed to sort any unexpected errors. Because there were no
unexpected errors reported during the run (the errors that were reported were all
expected), the sort failed (producing an expected error).
•
Operators were required to make business decisions. For example, during another
application run, an operator was requested to enter three dates: the current date and
the next two business days. To do this, the operator produced a wallet calendar and,
allowing for the weekend and after deciding that Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday
was a worldwide holiday, entered the data.