Re: Interactive lock down while batch runs -- MIDRANGE-L

James,

Whatever system you use, be on the alert for something going into the JOBQ
batch & not coming to a proper conclusion ... something bombed & someone
killed a job ... someone mucked with what was in JOBQ & the jobs ran in the
wrong sequence.

Of course you can also have some of this in interactive.

I have seen multiple ways to keep track of
... you are at step 1 ... you have not yet done step 2 ... it is invalid to
do step 3 now
... when you ran step 1 there were some errors that you have to correct ...
you cannot run step 2 until that is done
... you are at step 1 ... that job is in the JOBQ ... it has not yet reached
a conclusion ... you have to wait until then before doing another step
and other variations of this

One way is to have a data area with flags associated with what step they are
at & the status of that step.

One way is to have a tiny flag file or member ... one byte long, no records
... either it exists or does not exist.  The fact it exists means that a
particular step was started & not yet to a conclusion.

We have this stuff ... the name of the data area or flag file or member is
based on the work station address of the user who launched the thing, or
other factors if for example we can only have one open batch per facility at
the same time, and some modifier to keep track of multiple different tasks
that might be coming from the same user.

You raise some key issues.
Is management more interested in pretty graphics than getting the job done
efficiently?

I have run into variations on this situation many times in my career.

The biggest problem I have faced are people who are relatively new to the
multi-tasking multi-user environment.  They are accustomed to being on a PC
where they do something & it is done.

You see people like that who come into the computer room looking for "my
report."  Come to find out it either has not yet exited the JOBQ or it has
not yet printed.
Figuring this out can be difficult because when you ask them for the NAME of
the report or the NAME of the program ... "Duh, it is you know, the report I
run to list parts that have to be shipped today." or whatever way they use to
describe it.
They think that the instant it is gone from their work station screen, it
must be on the computer printer.

Next biggest problem is people who either lose their place or not know how to
check on the status of their job.  You see that with people who do step-3
twice, or do step 1 then 2 then 3 then 2, or 1 then 3 then 4 then realize
they missed 2.  The software needs to keep track for them what step they are
at, and give them a hard time when they try to do steps out of sequence.

In our reality we can have multiple batches going concurrently, so user-A is
at step 2 of payroll for site-A while user-B is at step 1 for site-B.

Your process bar may want to show some symbol for the fact that their job is
not yet running, because it is waiting on someone else in the Q, which implies
a) you want the batch job to send the interactive user a message when it has
in fact started running.
b) the interactive user might want an option to look at what all is in the Q
to see who is in front of their job.

If the batch job sends messages to the process bar when various stages get
done, you can have a hard time guaging the process.

I have a similar scenario with end-month.
We have this file that has over a million records in it.
One of the end-month steps is to separate out the records that are now over a
year old (precise cut-off is in a control file ... set # days retention
desired) & write them to tape, leaving 90% of records in the file.
We can't go to next step until this is done & the whole thing takes approx 2
hours.
I am at the office, my boss is at home checking by PC ANYWHERE.
"Is it done yet?  How much longer do you think it is going to be?"
What I want is some variant on WRKACTJOB file stack or GO CMDLCK that I can
look at & say ... it is now at record # xxx,xxxx which means it is ...
whatever fraction of the way.
I do not want to be modifying that program to send progress reports.
I want to go to some IBM command that will give me this kind of information,
because we have multiple cases of similar scenarios.

We are on BPCS which uses architecture of same CL used for same job having
option of being sent to JOBQ or running interactive ... we can modify to
block out one of the options.  Now the interactive job session that launched
the JOBQ batch could go into some kind of a wait state loop ...

I am waiting for a message from the JOBQ batch job such that it has got to
some point ... wait X minutes ... loop do I have the next message yet ... act
on it

This effectively locks the work station
Unless the user knows enough to cancel the job

> From: eMail@James-W-Kilgore.com (James W. Kilgore)

>  Howdy,
>
>  We are attempting to shift some legacy interactive workload to batch and
> have a situation that I would like some feedback on.
>
>  For example, a Payroll process is usually a batch type work load.  The menu
>  system gives the user a choice to:
>
>  (there's more but these are the batch type workload)
>
>  1) verify the payroll entries
>  2) run the calculations
>  3) print the checks
>  4) post the payroll
>
>  It would be real simple to take option #1 and make it a SBMJOB, if,
>  and it's a big IF, I could get the people to not run #2 until #1 is done.
>
>  Now I know that I could lock an object and prevent #2 from being run
>  while # 1 is already running and have the user try again
>  every five minutes or so.  They won't go for that.  Why?
>  Because they are used to having a progress bar being
>  displayed showing them how many minutes are left in the process
>  so they can do some other stuff while they wait.
> They don't have do try and die, they just watch and wait.
>
>  So here is what I would like to do:
>
>  1) have the job perform a SBMJOB to utilize the batch CPW
>  2) lock down the workstation, showing a process bar during the run
>
>  If the payroll run were only one program I could have the interactive
caller
>  contain a data queue to sync with the SBMJOB process,
>  but the batch process is a series of programs,
>  each having their own progress bar: compute gross wages,
>  compute 401k, compute section 125 medical, compute federal taxes,
>  compute state taxes, compute disability, compute garnishments, etc.
>
>  I'm thinking that I would write an interactive "requester" that sits on a
data
>  queue to lock the workstation, does the SBMJOB and each step feeds back
it's
>  particular point in time back to the requester which displays the progress
bar.
>  Since the interactive session uses very little resources it should have
> minimum impact on the interactive CPW.
>
>  Any better suggestions?
>
>  TIA,
>  J. Kilgore


MacWheel99@aol.com (Alister Wm Macintyre) (Al Mac)
BPCS 405 CD Manager / Programmer @ Global Wire Technologies Incorporated
http://www.globalwiretechnologies.com = new name same quality wire
engineering company: fax # 812-424-6838