Printing Reports

The following topics are covered in this chapter:

Immediate Printing vs. Deferred Printing

Immediate Printing

In the Active Report List screen, option P (Print) opens the Print Option window that enables you to request immediate report printing. This option is used to print reports that are not scheduled to be printed, or to request additional printed copies of reports that are scheduled for printing or have already been printed.

The report is immediately sent to the printer identified through the DEST and WTR fields (in the Print Option window).

All report printing characteristics are automatically assigned to the report including the APAPARM and OUTPARM options (if specified).

Deferred Printing

Deferred printing requests that reports be printed at a later time using a Control-D printing mission together with other reports that the user receives in the bundle.

A printing mission is defined online in the Mission Definition facility (option M in the IOA Primary Option menu). The printing mission contains all the parameters needed to print a bundle. Printing missions are stored in standard libraries. Usually, a printing mission is defined for every type of printed form.

For a printing mission to become active, it must first be placed in the Active Missions file. The process of selecting a printing mission from the definition in the library, and placing it on the Active Missions file, is carried out by one of the following methods:

  • Automatically, by the New Day procedure (CTDNDAY).

  • Using a batch (DAILY) job (procedure CTDPRDAY).

  • Manually, from the Printing Mission Definition screen, using the Order and the Force options.

  • Manually, under ISPF using the online Utilities panel (the CTDPRTRQ CLIST).

  • Manually, under ROSCOE (using RPF CTDRQPRT).

For additional information concerning printing missions, see the Control-D and Control-V chapter of the INCONTROL for z/OS Administrator Guide.

Defining a Printer

The PRINTER parameter (in member CTDPARM in the IOA PARM library) defines the logical printers on which Control-D can print. For each local printer in the data center, the following information must be specified:

  • Logical Printer Name: JES logical printer name.

  • Destination Code: JES destination code.

  • Lines per Minute: Speed of the printer in lines per minute. (In a data center that only uses Page Printers, the number of pages per minute must be specified.)

  • Printer Status: Initial status of the logical printer.

  • Chunk Size: Default size of the chunk sent to the printer. Control-D supports two techniques for printing:

    • One-Chunk Method.

    • Multi-Chunk Method.

These methods are discussed in the following pages.

  • Printer Type: Printer type must be defined in exit CTDUX003 for deferred printing, and exit CTDUX014 for immediate printing. The printer type can be:

    • APA: All Points Addressable Printer (or AFP page printers such as the 3800-3, 3820, 3835, 3900, and so on).

    • REG: Regular Impact Printer.

    • LAS: Laser Printer (all laser printers, except those working in APA mode – such as 3800-1).

    • XER: XEROX 97xx Laser Printer or any DJDE printer.

    • FOB: SIEMENS 2200 Model 2 and 2300 Model 2 Laser Printing Subsystems.

For more information concerning printer definition, refer to the Control-D chapter in the INCONTROL for z/OS Installation Guide: Installing, and the Control-D and Control-V chapter in the INCONTROL for z/OS Administrator Guide.

Chunk Size Considerations

Control-D automatically balances printing of bundles between different printers in the data center by dynamically deciding which printer is to print each bundle. Based on the speed of the available printers, the type of the printer, the size of each bundle waiting to be printed and the user-specified bundle priority, Control-D achieves maximum printing throughput.

The speed of the printers is estimated by Control-D according to the user- defined printing speed value.

One-Chunk Method

The entire bundle is sent to the spool for printing at one time. This method is activated by setting CHUNKSIZE in the printing mission definition to 0. If it is not specified in the printing mission definition, CHUNKSIZE defaults to the value that was defined during the installation process (in the PRINTER parameter of member CTDPARM in the IOA PARM library).

This method can be used for printing reports that contain identical prining characteristics. If reports containing different printing characteristics are processed in this manner, the characteristics of the first report are used as a default for all the reports in the bundle.

When using the CDAM PAGEDEF and/or FORMDEF printing parameters, the PAGEDEF and/or FORMDEF are added in-line prior to the data, so in this case, setting CHUNKSIZE to 0 is not valid.

Multi-Chunk Method

In this method, Control-D creates a new chunk each time the number of lines specified in the CHUNKSIZE parameter is exceeded, or when printing characteristics for the reports change, whichever occurs first (unless CHUNKSIZE is specified as "0" as described previously). CHUNKSIZE may be specified in the printing mission definition. If it is not specified in the printing mission definition, CHUNKSIZE defaults to the value specified during the installation process.

Multi-chunk processing has two major advantages:

  • Preventing overloading of the spool by controlling the size of the chunk.

  • Printing of reports with different printing characteristics within one bundle.

The multi-chunk method in Control-D is a unique design and enables reports containing any printing characteristics to be bundled in one bundle. Therefore, this method is the recommended method for AFP report printing.

Banner Pages

Banner exits supplied with Control-D print different types of banner pages. The banner pages are defined in the library allocated to the DD statement DABANNER of the Control-D Printers Control monitor, the online monitor, and each online user. A sample IOA BANNERS library is supplied as part of the IOA installation. The library contains the following banners:

Table 9 Banner Pages

Banner

Description
XxBNDLSTa Bundle Open Banner
XxBNDLENa Bundle Close Banner
xxUSERSTa Beginning of a User (Recipient) Reports Banner
xxUSERENa End of a User (Recipient) Reports Banner
xxREPSTAa Start of Report Banner
xxREPENDa End of Report Banner
$$UINDXH Header of Reports Index
$$UINDXV Format of each index line
$$ONLSTA Start Banner of immediate print requests
$$ONLEND End Banner of immediate print requests