Use of the Date Control Record by User Daily Jobs

The workflow of User Daily jobs is dependent on the Date Control record. The main steps of a User Daily job are

• checking the last running date of the User Daily job (using internal program CTMCHK)

  The first date in the Date Control record (columns 1 through 6) is compared to the current working date (at the time of the run).

  • If they match, the User Daily job has already run today. An appropriate message is issued and the condition code is set to 0008.
  • If the current working date is earlier than the first date of the Date Control record, a User Daily job run has been attempted before its time. The User Daily job stops executing and notifies the user accordingly.
  • If the current working date is later than the first date of the Date Control record (the normal situation), the first date of the Date Control record (columns 1 through 6) is updated to the current working date. This date is then used as the current scheduling date.

  If the User Daily job did not run for more than one day, a warning message is issued, and the User Daily job tries to schedule the jobs for all of the days that have passed since the last scheduling date (according to the production parameters). In such a case, you may want to run the User Daily job from a previous day, as described in Running a User Daily from a Previous Working Day.

  However, if the program list record for program CTMCHK contains the program argument CONFIRM, the User Daily issues a series of WTOR messages. For information about operator responses to these messages, see New Day Procedure Flow.

• placing job orders in the Active Jobs file according to the current scheduling date and the last running date (using utility CTMJOB)

  There are two methods for placing job orders in the Active Jobs file using utility CTMJOB. For a description of both methods, see Use the Sample JCL to Create JCL for Each User Daily Job.

  For each job, the program checks whether the job must be scheduled on one or all of the days that have passed since the last original scheduling date (date3 or date5) until the working date in the record (date1). If the job must be scheduled, a job order is placed in the Active Jobs file.

  When the program finishes processing the user tables, the finish indicator dates (date3 and date5) are updated to the working date (date1) calculated by program CTMCHK.

  Before program CTMJOB starts operating, it compares date2 with date3 (and date4 with date5). If they do not match, a previous run of program CTMJOB of the same User Daily job has probably abended. The user is notified and the program terminates. To correct the error, adjust the date values in the user Date Control record (using a standard editor).

  When manually modifying the Date Control record, make sure that jobs are not scheduled to run twice on the same day.

  indicating that the User Daily job has ended (using program CTMPDA)

  Program CTMPDA updates the finish indicator date (date6) by setting it to the value of the running date (date1). This indicates that the User Daily job finished successfully.

• rerunning the User Daily job after a failure

For further information, see Date Control Records and Enhanced Daily Checkpointing.