When Operations Sentinel requests hardware component information or application program information, it sends an initialization request message to the interface software. It then queries the host system for the information and sends only the requested information back to the Operations Sentinel server.

The initialization request from Operations Sentinel can involve hardware and software components.

Hardware component information is preceded by the INITIALIZE BEGIN message and terminated by the INITIALIZE END message. Application program information, if applicable, is sent following INITIALIZE END. The general format of the initialize message sequence is

INITIALIZE BEGIN

INITIALIZE {TAPE | PACK | PRINTER} message–text
			.
			.
			.
INITIALIZE {TAPE | PACK | PRINTER} message–text
INITIALIZE END
mixnum application–program–name LINKED TO API
			.
			.
			.
mixnum application–program–name LINKED TO API

The formats of the individual messages are described in the following subsection.