If the PENDING operand was not specified on the RECEIVE ORDER command, this implies a new HOLDDATA or PTF order request is to be created and sent to the IBM® Server.

Creating a new ORDER involves the following steps:

1. If CONTENT(HOLDDATA) is not specified on the RECEIVE ORDER command, then SMP/E constructs a software inventory (bitmap) and provides it to the IBM Server so an order can be tailored to the specific SMP/E environment. The FORTGTZONES operand on the RECEIVE ORDER command allows a user to specify the target zones used to define the scope of that software inventory. If FORTGTZONES is not specified, SMP/E uses all target zones defined by a ZONEINDEX subentry in the global zone as the target zone list. The server does not currently send back superseded PTFs, if the superseding PTF is already on the system as indicated in the bitmap.

   SMP/E uses the target zone list to generate the software inventory. The format of the software inventory is the same as that generated by the service routine GIMXSID except that the Feature records are not included in the inventory file.

   SMP/E writes the software inventory to a file within a temporary work directory in the UNIX file system. The naming convention for this work directory is /smpwkdir/smpedate_tod/ where smpwkdir is either the directory allocated to SMPWKDIR or the system /tmp directory, and date_tod is a unique date and time-of-day value of the form YYYYDDDHHMMSSthmiju.

2. SMP/E sends the request to the IBM server using the information specified in the ORDERSERVER data set. For PTF orders, the request includes the software inventory produced in the previous step. Communication with the server is performed using the HTTP protocol and SSL (Secure Sockets Layer), also referred to as HTTPS.
3. If the IBM server accepts the request, it returns a unique order identifier to SMP/E. SMP/E then creates an ORDER entry in the global zone to describe this order. SMP/E generates the name for the ORDER entry in the form ORDnnnnn, where nnnnn is a decimal number with leading zeros from 00001 to 99999. The unique order identifier returned by the server becomes the ORDERID subentry of the ORDER entry.