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IBM Service process

 

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The Service Team

The Java on z/OS and OS/390 service team is committed to getting a customer up and running as soon as possible in situations where their system halts or does not work as expected. This will be accomplished by a circumvention, a patch, or any other method that is viewed by the customer as relief, possibly temporary, until the final resolution of the problem is available. Fixes will be distributed through full product replacement which the customer can download from the website.

Java newsgroups are a place where you can get help from other customers or IBMers who also check these forums.

The service team:

  • performs diagnostics to determine the cause of reported problems. This is to determine whether a customer problem is a setup error or an application programming error.
  • receives the customer report of a problem
  • checks for rediscoveries or reported occurrences of the same problem
  • responds to customer questions having to do with potential defects in the Java for OS/390 code
  • implements install verification
  • runs trace and test scenarios
  • helps customers who are writing Applets
  • routes problems to "fixers" expeditiously
  • monitors problem and fix activity.
  • determines where the failure occurred
  • generates necessary fixes for the problem
  • tests the fix in the appropriate test environments
  • creates a fix package (which may contain multiple fixes)
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Severity definitions

Level Description
Severity 1 An emergency condition which prevents the customer from being able use the system or critical application.
Severity 2 A condition that severely impacts the usability of the system or critical application.
Severity 3 A non-critical condition that does not impact use of the system or critical application and which may be circumvented on a temporary basis by the intended user.
Severity 4 A minor problem condition which can be easily avoided or circumvented by the intended user.
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Service terms

Authorized Problem Analysis Report (APAR)
This is the formal report to IBM Development of a problem caused by a suspected defect in a current unaltered release of an IBM program. This is what service teams track after it's been determined that the defect is legitimate to the best of their understanding and ability. APAR is a record in the IBM RETAIN Database.
Problem Management Record (PMR)
A record of the activities performed during the course of resolving a customer reported problem. The service teams use the PMR as the tracking mechanism as they try to ensure that the reported defect is legitimate to the best of their understanding and ability. PMR is a record in the IBM RETAIN Database.
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Reporting a problem to IBM

When you report the problem to IBM, you must be able to define the problem specifically and provide relevant documentation. There are 3 ways to report a problem to IBM:

  1. Via a voice support call-in number
    • (US: 1-800-IBM-SERV)
    • (Canada: 800-465-2222)
    • (Italy: 16780094)
    • (France: 1 36 63 10 20)
    • (Singapore: 800-840-9020)
    • (Saudi Arabia: 800-1240-888)
  2. Via electronic access to OS/390 Software Support is available via the ServiceLink applications or on IBMLINK (registration required).

An online publication, The IBM Software Support Handbook, discusses IBM service for all platforms including OS/390. This document also exists as ISFHNDBK TERS3820 on ISFDOCS which is a tool on MKTTOOLS.

If things don't go right, you can always get help by calling 1-800-IBM-SERV and asking for the Duty Manager (24x7 availability).

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