Objects

An object is an entity that you define in TOM. TOM manages (starts and stops) the object based on the options and functions that you select for the object's attributes. You can define the following different types of objects in TOM:

Normal
Transient
Model
Layer
Restart-only

Note

In addition to the following sections, the introduction to Creating-and-managing-objects, and Managing-objects-across-sysplexes-with-layering also contain information about objects.

Normal objects

A normal object is a MVS Started Task, USS process, or Workload Manager resource that, when defined to TOM, has its status controlled by TOM. Examples of Started Task objects include TSO, IBM CICS regions, and JES. After the objects are defined, TOM becomes completely responsible for starting, stopping, and restarting the objects automatically.

Transient objects

A transient object is a Started Task, USS process, or Workload Manager resource that is started by TOM once during the life of a system IPL, but is not restarted after it stops.

For example, a transient object can start, perform a batch process, and terminate normally when the job is complete. After TOM starts these objects, it monitors them until they stop, and then it does not restart the object during the life of the IPL.

Models

Models are special objects that contain object properties. Model objects themselves are never started or stopped.

You can also use normal and transient objects as models. Enter the name of the object that you want to use as a model in the MdlFrom attribute.

It can be very labor intensive to create complex definition properties for an object especially when you need to define many similar objects that will run on many systems within a sysplex. When you define a model, it can be associated with an object. The associated object inherits properties from the model. In addition, when you change a definition of a model, the change is reflected automatically in all of the objects that are based on that model. A model can also inherit properties from other models.

Layer objects

With layer objects, you can easily generate objects for many systems within many sysplexes that are also running TOM.

Layer objects are part of a larger process that is described in Managing-objects-across-sysplexes-with-layering.

Restart-only objects

A restart-only object is a TOM object that TOM does not start. Restart-only objects are started by a process that runs outside of TOM, such as the COMMND00 PARMLIB member. When you define restart-only objects, after they are started TOM processing monitors the status of the object and can stop or restart the object, based on its specifications in TOM.