Starting the Apply Engine requires only the execution of the SQDATA program with a parsed Engine script. Depending on the platform that might be zOS JCL similar to the SQDATA member included in the distribution or a simple shell script or batch file that starts SQDATA directly or using the sqdmon utility.
Note: See VSAM Straight Replication for an example of the JCL that would be used if the target was a VSAM file and the engine runs on z/OS.