Workload Manager Tools

Hi Kyle,

We do use Control-M as our enterprise scheduler, and we use it extensively for scheduling Infor/Lawson tasks.

To be honest, it's pretty clunky - but it works.  Basically, we create scripts that call Infor/Lawson utilities to do whatever we need to do - wtsubmit, rqstatus, trigger and monitor flows, etc.

Kelly

How do you trigger IPA flows with Control-M and what amount of "visibility" into the triggered process does it have?

We use a script that we developed several years ago. It uses the "dataimport" utility to update a designated PfiTrigger record with a unique WorkTitle, do another "dataimport" call to perform a "start" action on that trigger, then use a "dbdisplay" call against PfiWorkUnit grepping for the unique WorkTitle created above to monitor for completion or error. Unfortunately, there isn't a utility like "wtsubmit" that will provide a workunit number to query with.

As to visibility - there is very little. Only what you can get from a command-line query. It's also VERY VERY SLOW. It takes almost 2 minutes for the script to trigger a flow because whenever you use DataImport it has to do a buildprod. It also throws lots of warnings and errors that really don't mean anything. If the process loses a connection, or the workunit errors, someone has to log into Rich Client and review the log to see what happened.

Overall, it's pretty clunky and we have issues with long-running flows where CTM loses the connection. Currently it's all in one script, but if I was going to do it again (or had enough time to re-engineer it) I'd separate the monitor from the trigger.

I've also considered using a file channel as a trigger instead, and just let CTM drop a file - but I haven't played enough with it to make it work. And monitoring would still be an issue.

Kelly

Thanks for this information.

 

Kyle Jorgensen

WoodmenLife