What is 'PROGRAM MANAGER/LOAD' in strobe report

Ketan Varhade · Posted: Wed Sep 23, 2009 12:25 pm

Hi,
I have strobe report for a job at my shop, it has a section SUPERVISOR CONTROL in it and in which PROGRAM MANAGER/LOAD
is taking the max CPU time, I would like to know what does this parameter signify.
I tried searching the forum as well as manual which I have, but could not find any thing on this.
Please help

Thanks

Anuj Dhawan · Posted: Wed Sep 23, 2009 12:41 pm

Program Manager is the crust (of zOS) -- just the name of the process, unless I misunderstood about what you asked for.

Ketan Varhade · Posted: Wed Sep 23, 2009 1:40 pm

Hi,

enrico-sorichetti · Posted: Wed Sep 23, 2009 1:52 pm

Ketan Varhade · Posted: Wed Sep 23, 2009 2:06 pm

Hi Enrico,
Is there any possiblity of reducing this timing, as we are focusing on reducing the MIPS or should we target something else in the report

enrico-sorichetti · Posted: Wed Sep 23, 2009 2:14 pm

Anuj Dhawan · Posted: Wed Sep 23, 2009 2:50 pm

Hi Ketan,

MIPS was an IBM measurement (no longer supported by IBM though) of the entire processing workload of a machine and that includes for example -- I/O to disk, I/O to tape, channel usage, memory usage, paging, cycle consumption, and so on ... so forth. And this concept can never be applied to individual jobs. It is wrong to talk about MIPS for a job.

MIPS is a measure of hardware. Your MIPS rating changes only when a new machine is installed; it is otherwise a constant value. You cannot measure jobs in terms of MIPS because you are comparing apples to oranges. You can state that a given job uses X amount of CPU time but the MIPS rating of the box is not affected in any way.

Just forget about the "posters" they stick all over there at "your shop" - they're sheer nonsense.

enrico-sorichetti · Posted: Wed Sep 23, 2009 3:43 pm

search www.redbooks.ibm.com/ for

ABC of System Programming zOS

vol01 sg246981.pdf
vol02 sg246982.pdf
vol03 sg246983.pdf
vol05 sg246985.pdf
vol06 sg246986.pdf
vol07 sg246987.pdf
vol08 sg246988.pdf
vol09 sg246989.pdf
vol10 sg246990.pdf
vol11 sg246327.pdf

zOS_basics sg246366.pdf

and do a bit of reading

Ketan Varhade · Posted: Thu Oct 08, 2009 12:29 pm

Hi,
I want to reduce the time for the loading, there are many module which this program is calling so I would like to know by reducing the number of call can have some effect on the CPU usage,

All the call done in the program are Dynamic call, would there be any saving if I convert all dynamic call to static call if storage is not a concern,

Please also let me know what measure that need to take care in doing this,

Robert Sample · Posted: Thu Oct 08, 2009 5:10 pm

The only way to reduce the CPU for loading is to change from dynamic calls to static calls. Once you've linked all the subprograms into a single load module, that load module will be loaded one time and that'll be that. Since you're not having to go out to disk repeatedly, that should cut the percent of time spent in Program Manager/Loader -- not by a lot since the load module being loaded will be much larger, but it should reduce the percent some.

However, if your application tuning is at the point where you are actually concerned about the amount of time required by the loader, you either have tuned everything reasonable, or the application is doing something really bizarre (such as loading subprograms and then canceling them, then loading them again).

Terry Heinze · Posted: Thu Oct 08, 2009 8:26 pm

Keep in mind that changing dynamic calls to static ones will require you to recompile all programs that do that static call any time the called program changes. Depending on how many calling programs there are and how often the called program changes can be a significant downside to this.

MBabu · Posted: Thu Oct 08, 2009 8:36 pm

There are many considerations.
If your program is loading othjer programs, you need to know where they are being loaded from. If they are being loaded from STEPLIB or JOBLIB or maybe even link list for example, and then being immediately unloaded, that means that contents supervisor has to read the disk for the program each time(*). You can improve that significantly by putting the program in LPA so that it is always in storage. Another trick is to load the program at the beginning of the execution so that it resides in the job pack area of storage. Then subsequent loads will use the already loaded copy (assuming it is reentrant, reusable, whatever). Which also leads to the point, make sure that the program is reusable (check the manuals - I may have the terms wrong).

If the program is already in LPA, the problem might just be the sheer number of calls. In that case, you are seeing normal contents supervisor activity but instead, you can load the program and store the address and use that instead of LOADing each time (not sure if COBOL can do that but you didn't say it is COBOL).

You can also make the program a static call as others have said but that means changing code and maybe incurring maintenance overhead.

* - that was an oversimplification - I think contents supervisor might reuse a previously loaded/unloaded module in some cases but I would not rely in that.

Ketan Varhade · Posted: Fri Oct 09, 2009 10:48 am

Thanks Babu, Terry and Robert for your valuable comments,

@ Robert,
We have tried each and every method to reduce the CPU timing but we did nto achived much while runing the strobe for the job found that me timing is mainly consumed in the loading the called program, the called program are C and some are REXX routine, COBOL also. The main problem is that we have to reduce the CPU timing.

@Terry
The calling program are kind of doing a fix work there wont be much changes in the called routine, we will take care when we have to change the called routine, we will again recompile the main prog.

@Babu,
The prgram is been loaded form a joblib in my procedure. I didnt get how to put the program in the LPA and even do not know to check in which LPA is currently in? can u also tell me how to lead the program in the bebining of the job ?
We doing this in a COBOL-DB2 program.

Thanks every one for there input will update you on the saving the CPU timing

Thanks

mike duff · New User Joined: 05 Mar 2009 Posts: 4 Location: halifax

I am curious are your rexx and c programs compiled?