Re: Newbie Question

I understand the risks, and this is somewhat a temporary solution (the old
way was having an over-dedicated person without sysadmin experience who just
manually monitored everything).

Since the output is moving to a linux box, I'm not relying on the exact
position of any particular string, just grepping for keys (MSGW, PROG1,
etc). If those are found/not found as each warrants, then we send an email
to warn us to check into things.

I'm sure it's my own ignorance, but I find it very surprising that a system
heralded for it's stability lacks the built-in ability to monitor/notify on
conditions like MSGW which can completely block functionality.

Steve


On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 1:09 PM, Scott Klement
<midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:

Stephen,

Spooled output (e.g. OUTPUT(*PRINT)) is not designed for a program to
consume. It's designed to be printed output for a human being to read.
IBM is perfectly able to change the layout of WRKACTJOB's
OUTPUT(*PRINT) at any release, or even PTF, without providing any sort
of notification to people. They can change it around as much as they
like, because it's intended to be read by a human-being, and that won't
hurt a human being! People can adapt easily to text being in a
different place on a page.

Therefore I advise caution in your project. If your goal is simply to
take the spooled output and display it (without modification) to the
user, then WRKACTJOB OUTPUT(*PRINT) is okay.

But, if you plan to parse the output and use it programatically, PLEASE
think twice before using OUTPUT(*PRINT). Use an API, that's what
they're for. The API will perform better, and it will give you data
that's not going to break when releases change, PTFs are applied, or
anything like that.

Or, in the very very very unusual event that compatibility is broken in
an API, they'll provide notice of this in the Memo To Users and you will
be aware of the problem and can fix it before it causes grief.




Stephen Cochran wrote:

Preface to say that I'm very new to the as400, stronger unix background.

I'm trying to write a small CL program that puts the output of WRKACTJOB
into a PC file so that it can be FTPed off the as400, ideally having the

CL

program executed by the FTP script using RMCD. I have the basics down as
shown below:

WRKACTJOB OUTPUT(*PRINT)

/* Delay for 2 seconds for output to finish */
DLYJOB DLY(3)

/* Copy spool output to file KAF/WAJFILE */
CPYSPLF FILE(QPDSPAJB) TOFILE(KAF/WAJFILE) +
JOB(419900/USER/QPRTJOB) SPLNBR(*LAST)

DLTSPLF FILE(QPDSPAJB) JOB(419900/USER/QPRTJOB)

This will sometimes work, and sometimes not ending with a CPF3343

message. I

have tried ending a MONMSG line to catch those, but even putting a

DLTSPLF

command in the MONMSG ends with the same error.

At this point I've tried just about every combination of options (using

the

job name for JOB parameter, using SMBJOB for the WRKACTJOB command, etc)

but

always run into some problem.

So my question is, what's the correct way to accomplish this? Being

somewhat

new, code examples are always welcome. Thanks.

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