RE: executing jobs in sequence

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx 
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jones, John (US)
Sent: Monday, January 08, 2007 9:23 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: RE: executing jobs in sequence

I would guess, though, that the main issues would be:
- Error handling.  It may be easier to do one super-error-handler for
the CL instead of writing/copying an error routine in all of the
individual jobs.
- Job/task restarts.  The CL code wouldn't be the prettiest. OTOH it
would ensure parms and other run-time necessities are always done
correctly

Just to add my $0.02.

Carefully consider the time and effort involved in running the process
with multiple steps/backups designed so that individual steps can be
re-run.

We had a month-end process that consisted of a bunch of individual such
steps.  I got rid of then all and created a single job that ran all the
steps.  We do a back up before we start, run the job, and check to
insure it ran correctly.  If there are any problems we restore from
backup, fix the issue and rerun.

It's a heck of a lot faster now than it was.  Even if a problem occurs.

IMHO, a process need not be easy to recover.  If you have to recover
often enough that "easy" is a requirement, you've got some other issue
that should be identified and corrected.

Errors are supposed to be the exception rather than the rule.  Plan for
them, but don't expect them as normal.

We went from expecting a long, difficult, problem filled close, to
expecting a quick, easy, no-problem close.


Charles Wilt
--
iSeries Systems Administrator / Developer
Mitsubishi Electric Automotive America
ph: 513-573-4343
fax: 513-398-1121