Introduction to NonStop Operations Management

Application Management
Introduction to NonStop Operations Management–125507
11-17
Implementation of Recommendations
At NASL, the application requirements specifically address the following design
requirements:
•
All application input data must be verified. The application developers are now
required to design applications as follows:
1. Accept all inputs.
2. Echo them back.
3. Ask the operator to verify data. If the operator confirms the data, then proceed.
If not, allow the operator to reenter the data.
•
All applications must run normally without errors. There is great danger in allowing
production jobs to run normally with error messages. Operators will get used to the
errors and might miss a real one. At NASL, messages are now sent to the operator
for only two reasons:
•
When operator intervention is required
•
When there is some piece of information the operator must be aware of
There are two ways the application developers could resolve the sort error described
earlier:
•
The application program, recognizing that there are no records to be sorted since
there are no errors, can bypass the sort.
•
A TACL macro could absorb the error messages and discard them so that the
operator does not see any error.
•
All applications must use the Event Management Service (EMS). To help reduce
operator intervention, NASL now requires that all new applications use EMS to
format events and messages in a standard fashion and to generate messages to other
systems and other applications programs. Some of the other event-management
standards NASL requires include:
•
Applications must be developed using EMS FastStart for creating all event
messaging for the application.
•
All events must be tokenized. EMS FastStart can be used to create EMS events
in tokenized format.
•
Each event must have a unique event number. The event number must be one of
the tokens in the message.
•
Each event must be categorized as informational, warning, or critical.
•
All application EMS events will be reviewed during the design walk-through for
the application and again prior to the acceptance of the application by
operations.
•
All dates must be retrieved from a database. Time is lost and risk is involved when
the operator must enter dates for an application. Looking up dates on a calendar and
adjusting for weekends, holidays, and partial holidays in one city or another takes
time and can potentially create errors.