APAR
Authorized Program Analysis Report: IBM's official record of a reported problem in its software, and of how it is fixed.
Also written Authorized Program Analysis Report, open APAR, closed APAR, APAR fix
An APAR, short for Authorized Program Analysis Report, is IBM's record of a problem in one of its products. When a customer reports a problem and IBM confirms it is a defect, IBM opens an APAR to describe it.
Each APAR has an ID, such as OA12345 for z/OS components or PH12345 for many other products. It describes the symptom, the conditions that cause it, which releases are affected, and, once solved, how it was fixed. The fix itself is delivered as one or more PTFs, one for each release.
APARs are searchable on IBM's support site. That makes them useful when you meet an odd error message or abend: searching for the message ID or the symptom often finds an APAR that describes exactly what you are seeing, and the PTF that fixes it.
In problem tickets you may read that an issue "matches an open APAR", meaning IBM knows about it and is working on a fix, or "is fixed by a PTF", meaning the fix exists and needs to be installed.
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- PTFProgram temporary fix: a packaged fix from IBM for a problem in z/OS or another IBM product, installed with SMP/E.
- SMP/ESystem Modification Program/Extended: the tool used to install and maintain z/OS and other software, keeping a record of every piece and every fix.
- Production supportKeeping live systems running: diagnosing failures, fixing what broke, and getting the service back.
- System programmerThe person who installs, configures, tunes and upgrades the operating system and its subsystems.