got bitten by RTVJOBA date

I often use RTVJOBA in CL to get user name and system date. I know it's the job date, but since nothing around here ever runs past midnight, I figured I was ok.

WRONG!

I have some month end inventory processing that I run on the last day of the month. It manipulates the dates so I can get the month, the month from 2 years ago and from 3 years ago and date stuff we've all done lots of times.

I had a home grown CL where I would put in 1 years worth of dates and run if it was the 25.

So I got 'smart' and set it up as a scheduled job last December. It has been running like clockwork at 10pm the 25th of each month (our month end). What I did not realize was the job is set as the day I put in on the schedule, not the day it runs. So for the last 6 months, I was re-running December 25th 2012 over and over. (I'm not even sure how it got 12/25/12 as the date submitted. No one around here works on christmas) I use the month number as part of the file name, so my FILENAME12 stuff got overlayed every month.

I have now changed those jobs to RTVSYSVAL QDATE.

I'm sure I read somewhere, sometime,a long time ago, that scheduled jobs use the job date when added to the schedule, not the date run. But I forgot about it.

Now I've got to see what I can clean up and how far back our backups go. I just wanted to share my sad tale as I go off to cry in my beer. Lots of beer.

---Dale