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Introducing Workgroups
You can think of a workgroup, like its predecessor the scheduling
subqueue, as a dynamically changing collection of processes. A workgroup
consists of three components: the workgroup name, membership criteria,
and specific scheduling characteristics.
There are two types of workgroups which you can have on your system:
* System-defined workgroups, which come with your system and cannot
be deleted.
* User-defined workgroups, which you create, modify and purge as
needed to meet the changing demands of your system workload.
Each type of workgroup is explained in the following sections.
System-defined workgroups
All customers who update to version C.50.00 of MPE/iX will have five
system-defined workgroups on their systems. Each system-defined
workgroup corresponds to one of the five traditional scheduling
subqueues. The AS subqueue, for example, becomes the AS_Default
workgroup. Other than the difference in nomenclature, however, there is
nothing that distinguishes the system-defined workgroup from their
counterpart, the scheduling subqueue. The set of scheduling
characteristics that you can control including the base and limit
priorities, min and max quantum values, boost property (DECAY or
OSCILLATE), and timeslice, as well as their behavior, remains unchanged.
Table 1-1. A Comparison of Scheduling Subqueues and System-Defined Workgroups
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| | | | |
| Queue | Corresponding Workgroup | Membership Criteria | Scheduling |
| | | | Characteristics |
| | | | |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| | | | |
| AS | AS_Default | MEMB_QUEUE=(AS) | Uses default values |
| | | | |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| | | | |
| BS | BS_Default | MEMB_QUEUE=(BS) | Uses default values |
| | | | |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| | | | |
| CS | CS_Default | MEMB_QUEUE=(CS) | Uses default values; |
| | | | allows system manager to |
| | | | make changes. |
| | | | |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| | | | |
| DS | DS_Default | MEMB_QUEUE=(DS) | Uses default values; |
| | | | allows system manager to |
| | | | make changes. |
| | | | |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| | | | |
| ES | ES_Default | MEMB_QUEUE=(ES) | Uses default values; |
| | | | allows system manager to |
| | | | make changes. |
| | | | |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Each of the system-defined workgroups has one and only one criterion for
membership: the queue attribute which specifies its scheduling subqueue.
This assures complete backward compatibility with previous versions of
the operating system. All user processes will fall into one of these
system-defined workgroups using the customary scheduling parameters and
all existing programs and job scripts will continue to work.
User-defined workgroups
Using the Workload Manager, system managers can create an essentially
unlimited number of user-defined workgroups to partition their system's
workload. Such workgroups consist of a workgroup name, membership
criteria, and scheduling characteristics. Continue reading here for a
general introduction to workgroups. For complete information about
creating workgroups, modifying workgroups, and changing the workgroup
configuration, read Chapter 3.
Workgroup name.
The workgroup name uniquely identifies the workgroup. Typically, it
indicates the kinds of processes which become members of the workgroup,
such as Program_Development or Payroll_Batch.
Membership in a user-defined workgroup.
Membership criteria for a user-defined workgroup can be any combination
of the following, but at least one criterion is required:
* Logon identity, of the form job/session name,user.account. The
job or session name is optional, but the user and account names
are required. To capture a group of processes which share a
similar identity, the logon identity may include wildcard
characters.
* Program name. As in logon name, the use of wildcards is permitted
in the program name specification.
* Queue attribute, which is one of AS, BS, CS, DS, or ES. Note that
the queue attribute is not the same as the scheduling subqueue.
The attribute is one element used to determine membership in a
workgroup whereas the traditional scheduling subqueue, as an
entity, is comparable to the workgroup.
Each process is assigned to its appropriate workgroup at process
creation, whenever a process attribute on which workgroup membership is
based is changed, or after it is explicitly assigned to a workgroup.
Any command, intrinsic, or AIF that sets or changes the queue attribute
of a process may also set or change the workgroup of that process (if
QUEUE is specified in the membership criteria.) Subqueue assignment of a
process can be set by RUN, HELLO, JOB, and LINK, and it can also be
changed with ALTPROC, AIFPROCPUT, and GETPRIORITY.
Scheduling characteristics of user-defined workgroups.
The scheduling characteristics the system manager can assign to a
workgroup include the following:
* base and limit priorities
* quantum bounds
* boost property
* timeslice
* minimum and maximum CPU percentage bounds
These characteristics, with the exception of minimum and maximum CPU
percentage bounds, should be familiar to system managers since they are
characteristics of the traditional scheduling subqueues set with the TUNE
command. CPU percentage bounds let you either guarantee that processes
in a workgroup will get at least a specified amount of CPU time (the
minimum CPU percentage) or place an upper limit on the amount of CPU that
processes in a workgroup get (the maximum CPU percentage).
The next chapter, "Planning for Workgroups", explains each of these
characteristics for individuals who want to review the information
conceptually. Chapter 3, "Creating Workgroups", has examples of how to
set and change scheduling characteristics, and all command parameters are
fully documented in Chapter 5, "Commands Reference".