What is DPRTY in mainframe JCL?

Question

When we are submitted a job, 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.