JOBLIB vs STEPLIB - Library Management Crisis

"3:30 AM Saturday. You get paged: Monthly premium calculation job is ABENDing with S806 (program not found) at Step 7.

Investigation shows:

• JOBLIB points to PROD.LOADLIB.V123
• Steps 1-6 completed successfully using programs from V123
• Step 7 needs program CALCINT2 which was just deployed to PROD.LOADLIB.V124
• Steps 8-12 still need programs from V123
• Business opens at 8 AM - premium notices must go out

You have 3 options:

A) Change JOBLIB to V124 and rerun from Step 7

B) Add STEPLIB to Step 7 pointing to V124

C) Copy CALCINT2 from V124 to V123

Which do you choose and why? What are the risks of each option?"

• Production incident management under pressure
• Understanding of load library search order
• Risk assessment and decision-making
• Knowledge of JOBLIB/STEPLIB priority rules

1. Correct choice: Option B (STEPLIB for Step 7)

2. Reasoning: Minimal risk - only affects Step 7, other steps unaffected

3. Risk of Option A: Unknown impacts if V124 has different versions of other programs

4. Risk of Option C: Change control violation, potential library management issues

5. Verification step: Check if Steps 8-12 programs exist in V124 before deciding

6. Post-incident: Update deployment procedures to handle partial migrations

• ❌ Doesn't know STEPLIB overrides JOBLIB
• ❌ Chooses Option C without mentioning change control
• ❌ Doesn't consider what happens to Steps 8-12
• ❌ No mention of testing or verification

• "What if you add STEPLIB to Step 7 pointing to V124, but CALCINT2 is not there either?"
• "How would you prevent this situation in future deployments?"
• "If STEPLIB and JOBLIB both have the program but different versions, which runs?"