An Authorized Program Analysis Report, or APAR, is a formal report to IBM development of a problem caused by a suspected defect in a current release of an IBM program. If IBM development is able to confirm the existence of the defect they will update the APAR with any known workarounds and perhaps an indication of which future release, if any, of the IBM program they intend to target for a formal fix to the defect and whether or not a Program Temporary Fix (PTF) is planned. The APAR will then be published so that it is visible to supported customers.
If a Service Request / Problem Management Record (SR/PMR) that you have submitted results in an APAR being created and published, or is related to an already published APAR, your support engineer will advise you of the APAR reference number. You can find the APAR by searching for it using the search box at the top of any page on the IBM web site. For example, this search…