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I'm being forced to work primarily with a Tivoli Workload Scheduler (TWS). My impression so far is that it is not user friendly to install and use and that has some strange aspects in its interface and architecture.

The objective of TWS is to allow planning and automating deployments and jobs like data transfer and data processing.

Do you know the TWS? What is your opinion about it?

Not convinced it was a good choice for our objectives.

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"it is not user friendly to install and use and that has some strange aspects in its interface and architecture" - you just described every piece of software that costs more than $5000 and is over 5 years old, I think. I have no experience with TWS so i can't comment specifically. But if you think it's a bad fit for your objectives, why don't you explain what those objectives are, and why you think it's a bad fit? –  mfinni Feb 1 '10 at 17:38
Clearly you need to precise your objectives. Without that the anwer will be one of : yes|no|may be|42 –  Fleole Feb 6 '10 at 15:20
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3 Answers

TWS is a very good application for a big and even a complex environment. It has the capability to schedule jobs in all environments including applications like SAP and Peoplesoft. TWS is very reliable.

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It's complex, expensive, reliable, sophisticated, and effective in a heterogeneous environment (for example, synchronizing jobs between Unix and mainframe servers). IMHO it would be overkill for managing a few servers, but more at home in large environments.

Also a popular choice for IBM environments.

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It s complex, painfull for administrators, hard to understand for users. A simple thing like File detection is broken if you have linux servers . The product comes with nothing to administrate . IBM had the great idea to create a new interface ( TDWC ) in which it s ilmpossible for users to use graphical view in a efficient way. The product requires dedicated and expert personnal to manage it. Everything needs to be scripted or written if you want to integrate if your SI. Or else, you just have to buy the whole IBM suite.

You can do whatever you want but it requires extra effort, and add more complexity . I wouldn't even recommend it to big structure because of poor capabilities managing multiple applications or groups of applications within the product. It s reliable if you use the Fault Tolerant Agent which are extremely expensive.

The Java API, Workload Broker, Events Rules system are a great addition. Complex schedulign is impossible but Event Rules can solve tricky scheduling with more and more complexity. You scheduling has to becomes dynamic if you want to resolve some scheduling scenarios. You can enhance the interface ; but you then will need more and more people (java devellopers). So you won't do it because there is already a bunch of administrator managing this overly complex gaz machinery.

Migrations are not so easy , the products comes with DB2 and Websphere wich requires more skills and adds again more complexity and dependencies within your systems.

If i had to choice of my Enterprise Scheduler, i would never ever choose it. I can't hardly of any positive point. This product is not designed for peoplet.It s so complex that you will be just happy to do some basic stuff. You will never want to use the most advanced features because of com-ple-xi-ty and bad design , bad architecture.

I've Been working as TWS user, and now administrator for 3 years, 2000 servers and I just think this product is very badly designed and i m so happy i'll never have to use it again.

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