For much of this course, we've been talking about using the 30 to 70 console to access the system, but there are actually several ways you can interact with the mainframe and they can be as graphical, text, or API based as you'd like. After all, the fundamentals of z/OS are well-documented and open to whatever model you want to use. Let's talk about z/OSMF, which stands for the z/OS management facility. This provides system management functions in a task-oriented browser-based user interface. The goal of z/ OSMF is putting as much of the operating system directly at your fingertips as possible, so you can really focus on what you're trying to get done. This includes streamlining the kinds of commands we've been talking about here, but z/OSMF also has a lot of new capabilities that are unique to z/OSMF itself, z/OSMF is shipped as part of the operating system, and it aims to simplify, optimize, and modernize z/Os to the system programmer, as well as to people who specialize in networking, storage, security. So there's really something for everyone. Wait, there's a way to make all this simple. Why don't you just show me that earlier? Why did I have to learn all about IODF configs, system libraries, JCL and all that? Well, in many cases, you still need to know what's happening behind the scenes. The goal here is simplification, assistance, and ScriptAbility. If there's something wrong with your JCL, z/OSMF might not have a specialized tool to help you. If your system libraries aren't set up right, z/OSMF might not work, and if you're security definitions are wrong, you've got to fix that before you can jump into z/OSMF. So knowing what's happening on the system is incredibly important. But once you've gotten z/OSMF up and running, you should see if those task can be further automated by what's available now. It's especially helpful when you have a mixed skill workforce because the experience system programmer can take a task they know like the back of their hand and automate it into what's called a workflow, hand that workflow off to a new mainframer, and they can guide it through to completion without needing to come up with all of the commands themselves. Even better, because the workflow has already been written and we all know it works, it's going to be a whole heck of a lot more consistent from run to run than someone typing out commands for memory. You don't need me to tell you that's important. These workflows integrate with JCL, Rexx, Unix, Rest APIs, and other often used mainframe utilities because the first thing assist Prog will tell you when you offer to automate something is, "I've already got some JCL Rexx or a Unix shell script that basically handles that." What makes this really handy is that you can build a workflow which has a number of steps and conditions, and run it from a Rest API, that really opens up a whole new set of possibilities like mobile apps, Cloud services, advanced scripting. Like I said, it's a good time to be getting into z. Before we get much further, let's do a little pop quiz just to make sure we're on the same page. If you knew that z/OSMF ships as part of the operating system, then you're correct. Since z/OSMF is deeply integrated into the operating system, it's just there. You will have to take some steps to enable it, but you don't need to download or compile z/OSMF. Okay, enough talking about it. Let's take a look at what it looks like. You login to z/OSMF from this login screen, and then we get this screen which is the z/OSMF desktop, pretty different from what you've seen so far. Major tasks are grouped into these icons which you can drag around, arrange into folders. All the stuff you would just expect to be there. So let's go into the workflow editor, and you can see this is where I build the steps and I can also set variables and monitor feedback. If we explore a little more, we find dedicated tools and here are the things like SDSF, remember that? We can see at a glance how busy the system is, and we can look at job and system output, as well as memory utilization right down here. RMF has its own interface, that's the resource manager. So we can quickly check on the common storage activity. I don't need to remember commands, but I do need to know what I'm doing. You might have the authority to enter a command, and z/OSMF might make it easy. But remember, just because you can, Doesn't mean you should. Right. I also want to show you the CICS Flex Viewer. Here you get a view of the coupling facility structures, and you can get info and perform actions on them, and this is great. I wish this were around when I first started working on z/OS systems because even if I knew something was acting a little weird with regard to a coupling facility structure, I'd still have to look up all of the commands to get that info, and even if I knew exactly what I wanted to do, I'd still have to look up the commands to do things like rebuild the structure, and what's really nice about this is you can very easily go up two commands log and find out what the command equivalent of what you did is, so you don't lose out on that. Now to run z/OSMF, you need Java, OMVS, COM Server, and an external security managers. Something like backref. You need the right compatible versions and they need to be set up right, preferably before you try and start configuring z/OSMF. I'll also say that you can use z/OSMF to get to a terminal or to use ISPF. But if you're using z/OSMF just to go right back to doing things the old way, you're missing out on a lot of potential here. That is z/OSMF in a nutshell. There's plenty more to explore in it. But definitely check this out because as time goes on, you'll see more and more tools and capabilities being made available through it.
