RE: Chagning Job Q definition

"Better" is in the eye's of the beholder.  Many existing software packages 
rather count on the single string job queue.  And then they'll submit a 
bunch of jobs to use it.  Can be simplistic.  You also run into "recovery 
procedures" when one job abends and the next one in the queue kicks off, 
etc.

Alternative procedures may include something like trying to get an 
exclusive lock on an object, either waiting or killing other jobs that 
have locks on that object, and then going from there.  This long running 
job can then have multiple steps in there to handle recovery process. Like 
updating a data area to keep track of which step last successfully 
completed.  Thus knowing where to restart.

I think IBM's Advanced Job Scheduler (not the default WRKJOBSCDE) and 
maybe Robot's product and others, have different techniques where you can 
say don't submit this job until this other one successfully completes.

Data queues can often be used for some of this process.  However, I don't 
know if a data queue, set up to be single string, is any better.  (I 
suppose if you are just banging out the transactions it would be because 
then you wouldn't have job start times to deal with.)

So, it can be done, however, is it worth it?

Rob Berendt