Re: Inventory Month End & Other Batch Jobs -- BPCS-L

>From Al Macintyre
BPCS 405 CD

It might help if you gave the BPCS name of the job that runs forever from 
Month End, like INV900 can hang asking for the right media, but if the user 
does not happen to notice that it is waiting on this message ...  We use a 
tape drive & write a variety of 900 stuff to the same tape - the end-month 
person is in a different office than the physical drive - I know we should 
wait until it has finished rewinding from prior copy before doing next 900 
job, like SFC905, to tape ... even though BPCS says job is done, tape drive 
might not be ready, which can lead to some interesting error message 
conflicts.

I am interested in how you handle backups.  Currently, I like to bring our 
whole system down for a backup, because I cannot control random people 
signing on in the middle of a backup & conflicting for access to files.  
Obviously if you have jobs running for days, my approach is not doable.

We can do WRKUSRJOB *ALL users on OS/400 which lists for us all user jobs 
that are currently in the system, most of which are status OUTQ which means 
they are no longer active but have unprinted reports.  Scroll down to those 
that are status ACTIVE then look into further detail on the specifics of 
those jobs.

We can also do WRKACTJOB showing stuff currently active then F14 to also show 
discontinued sign-on sessions (normally associated with people gone to lunch 
who don't want anyone messing with their stuff) then cursor on the user 
column and F16 to order the list by the column we put the cursor on.  There 
is a lot of info here, and I think it is an over-used command.

If the batch job was running in its own sub-system, separately from shorter 
lived batch jobs, then additional resource could be assigned to that 
sub-system for the time periods outside regular working hours (weekends & 6 
pm to 6 am), when that resource is not needed for normal demands on the 
system, then the resource taken away again for normal working hours.  I have 
only done this in IBM class, so I do not remember if you could have a 
scheduled job containing all the CL to automate the switch to generous vs. 
slender allocation of resources to the long-running jobs sub-system.

When jobs start & end, they write a record to HST including how many machine 
seconds of resource they consumed, along with identity of user, work station, 
etc.  Unfortunately we cannot write HST directly to an *OUTFILE.

If you can locate the software that launches these jobs, you could modify the 
CL for purposes of logging something.  I have some jobs that seem to take an 
inordinate amount of time, that have embedded SNDMSG to QSYSOPR so we can 
narrow focus to how long it takes between various check-points & see if it 
really is a problem on a regular basis, and at what point it is eating the 
most time.  

However, what we are bitching about are jobs that take 10 minutes, which is a 
different level of user expectation than your scenario.

We have a batch job queue coded to generate JOB LOG when the job completes.  
Have your regular queue on hold, transfer it to this queue, then let it run & 
when it is done, analyse the job log.

Hope I have shared some ideas that can help you.

Al 

>  From:        MJOconno@toyota.co.nz (MJOconnor)
>  
>  It would be appreciated if anyone could offer any assistance with the
>  following query.
>  When running Inventory Month End from the SCM/Inventory Menu it appears
>  that a batch job is created, which can take up to several days to
>  complete. 
>  In regards to this job and other similar such 'batch jobs, is there a
>  facility/process available to:
>  (a)  track the existence of such batch jobs, when they are active,
>  when they start and complete etc etc ?
>  (b)  determine their User/Process ID ?
>  (c)  control the amount and priority of assigned system resource, in
>  order to speed up the completion ?
>  
>  Thanks
>  
>  BFN
>  Martin O'Connor
>  TOYOTA New Zealand Ltd
>  PO Box 46 PALMERSTON NORTH, NZ
>  Email          martin.oconnor@toyota.co.nz
>  DDI             NZ 64 6 350 3415
>  CellPh       A/Hrs 025 734952
>  http://www.toyota.co.nz
>  http://www.lexusnz.co.nz
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