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Streamlining output processes
at the State of Washington

Background

Since 1990, the State of Washington has used RSD’s EOS (Enterprise Output Solution) as their report management repository. The DIS S/390 platform operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and includes three mainframe processors running on a z/OS platform. The processors have a total capacity of 1,340 million instructions per second (MIPS) and are divided into 12 logical partitions. Batch processing represents a considerable portion of the workload at DIS. The environment combines both client server and mainframe computing to support a broad range of applications that are integral to the transparent delivery of government services.

Volume challenge

The state processes more than 3 million transactions daily and generates thousands of reports for accounting, budgeting, payroll and personnel. One of the tools DIS uses to process this output is CICS (Customer Information Control System), a mainstay system of large, transaction-heavy data centers. Currently, the center processes 110 million CICS transactions per month. For many years, EOS has played a key role in the efficient handling of the volume of reports generated by these transactions. “With this application, we have discovered a truly innovative method to reduce the overall processing time of certain CICS-submitted batch jobs dramatically,” says Steve Fowler of the Computer Services Division.

Substantial reduction of processing time

One of DIS’ customers provides other state agencies the ability to generate ad hoc financial reports. In the past, when a customer requested a report, a CICS transaction submitted a batch job that produced the requested report and wrote a charge back record to a billing flat file. Each batch job in turn held the billing flat file exclusively. During peak periods backlogs were frequent because jobs serialized, filled job initiators and then accumulated in a queue waiting to be processed.
An obvious answer to this dilemma would have been to spend the time and effort re-programming the nature of the billing file for multi-user simultaneous access. Instead, DIS utilized EOS in a new and innovative way to facilitate the control of the billing file by using an EOS form. Within the definition of the form, the output is automatically written to the billing file. “EOS acts as the traffic cop for the dataset and eliminates the backlog. Batch jobs no longer need exclusive use of the billing file because EOS is writing to the billing record to the flat file. The initiators are not clogged up with jobs waiting for exclusive use of the flat file. Using EOS has reduced the processing window time significantly, from 20-25 hours down to 4 hours. Fowler adds, “And, the integrity of the data record is maintained.”

EOS enhances the legacy process

EOS is well suited for high volume data centers. The State of Washington utilizes EOS to enhance a legacy process and streamline critical business applications. In addition, EOS allows the data center to leverage its existing IT infrastructure and current systems, which means improved functionality, reliability and performance. EOS is one of many resources the State of Washington relies on to deliver better service, meet key challenges and remain a leading center of technology innovation.

For more information, contact us at info@rsd.com

Copyright © RSD, August 2003. All rights reserved.