Typical current situation

For the creation and maintenance of data-processing-documents which are related to other data-processing-documents, a common transfer of these documents into the different processing levels (eg. development, test, quality-control) and into the production system should be mandatory. Any attempt at manual combination of documents (eg. creation of configurations) forms a source of errors from which the effects are first felt in the production system. This creates an unnecessary and unacceptable security risk.

The reconstruction of a previous configuration (ie. restoration of a chosen status of a configuration including all statuses of all related documents) requires very considerable manual effort and, even if it is possible, it is unreliable and insecure.

Typical questions arising in connection with configurations are:

• Which documents (programs, copy books, files, Job Control Streams, project and documentation descriptions) belong with which processing and version statuses to any given configuration? In which configuration is a particular document used, and which version is it?
• Which documents were used, with which statuses at a certain point in time by any given configuration?
• Is the rebuild ability guaranteed? Is the Configuration Management automatic?

Solution using SET-LIBER Configuration Management

SET-LIBER provides the capability of managing any configuration, which is a freely definable combination of documents and/or the automatic complement by any other related documents from all and any levels. As an example, a configuration could consist of all documents which have to be tested, examined and implemented into a specific production process by reason of a change-task.

The end-user can define the connections of a configuration within a configuration description which is constructively managed within SET-LIBER.

SET-LIBER can supplement the documents of the configuration description by the names and statuses of any dependent documents (eg. related copy-books and sub-programs); this completion of a configuration is finalised by SET-LIBER automatically within one working step upwards and/or downwards to any and all levels.

if the source of a configuration is a SET-LIBER managed document with all its dependent documents (eg. Job-Control-Stream, program etc.), the manual creation of a configuration description is not necessary. In this case SET-LIBER uses the existing information about any and all document dependencies from the Repository.

The execution of any SET-LIBER function for a configuration means that it will be executed for all documents belonging to this configuration (eg., transmission of all documents of one configuration to next processing level or to production). Each document will have the required process automatically executed and recorded as defined by the company's procedures.

The end-user can fix the status of a configuration at any time. The current status of each related document (eg. version-number, date and time of creation) will be recorded within the configuration description automatically.

Previous configuration statuses can be reconstructed automatically at any time; all related documents will be reconstructed with their required statuses.