What is DPRTY in z/OS JCL?

Question

When we submit a job, the following steps are executed sequentially.

Then what is the importance of DPRTY?

Answer 1

DPRTY is a very old JCL keyword that harks back to the days of MVS/ESA. It was the dispatch priority which dictated to JES what priority individual steps should be given in a job.

On all versions of z/OS I have access to (all the supported ones), it has no effect. This is because the WLM (workload manager) goal mode is the only mode used in z/OS 1.3 and beyond. I believe this keyword was deprecated in MVS/ESA V5R1M0 (see INFO APAR II09592).

You can safely ignore it, since JES itself ignores it - all your job steps will be executed in a top-down manner in your JCL job card, with the dispatch priority given by the IEAIPSxx PARMLIB member.

Answer 2

DPRTY is used to assign dispatching priority to the job step. It is different from the class priority, as class priority applies for the entire job whereas DPRTY applies to particular job step.

Syntax:

DPRTY(value1, value2) value1 = 0-15 value2 = 0-15

DPRTY is computed as

DPRTY = (value1*16) + value2