IFAPRDxx (product enablement policy)

Use the IFAPRDxx parmlib member to define the enablement policy for products or product features that support product enablement. The policy lists the products and features, as well as the system environment in which they are enabled to run.

With z/OS®, IBM® supplies a tailored IFAPRD00 member of SYS1.PARMLIB. This tailored member enables the product and any optional features ordered with the product. Your installation can, however, order additional optional features from IBM at a later time, then enable these features after contacting IBM, subject to the product's license terms and conditions. For information about how to define a specific IBM product, see z/OS MVS Product Management.

To enable an optional product or feature, you add it to the policy; that is, you add the product to an IFAPRDxx member, then activate the member. Adding a product to the policy is the most common task related to IFAPRDxx; you can, however, disable a product or remove it from the policy. Note that adding a product or feature might require changes to other SYS1.PARMLIB members and an IPL before the product or feature can run.

The system builds the enablement policy from the PRODUCT statements and WHEN statements in the active IFAPRDxx member(s). Each WHEN statement defines a system environment. PRODUCT statements identify products and product features that are enabled or disabled when running in the system environment defined on the preceding WHEN statement.

The system checks the policy when a product, such as an optional z/OS feature, calls the Register service during its initialization. If a product in the policy is not defined or not found, the type of register request determines whether the product is treated as enabled or disabled. For information about the Register service, see z/OS MVS Programming: Product Registration. For information about how to set up your system to report on registered products, including those that support product enablement, see z/OS MVS Product Management.

When the system checks the policy for a match with a product that is registering, all comparisons allow wildcard characters (* and ?). You can thus define WHEN statements that match multiple system environments and PRODUCT statements that match multiple products.

To determine enablement, the system matches the product that is registering against the statements in the enablement policy. It is possible, because of wildcard characters (? and *) in the policy statements, that multiple policy statements might match the given input product. In that case, MVS™ uses the "best" match to determine whether or not the product is enabled, using the following rules:

1. An exact match is better than a wildcard match. There is no differentiation between two wildcard matches.
2. The parameters are processed in the following order: Prodowner, ProdID, Prodname, Featurename, Prodvers, Prodrel, and Prodmod. An exact match on a parameter earlier in the list (such as Prodowner) is better than a match on a parameter later in the list (such as Prodname).
3. If, after applying the first two rules, more than one match remains, MVS uses the first match of those that remain.