IOABLCAL – Build Calendars

The scheduling of jobs, missions and rules in the IOA environment is frequently based on calendars. A data center can use different calendars for different scheduling requirements.

Table 15 Scheduling Calendars

In many cases, a calendar is related to, or derived from, another calendar or a combination of two other calendars. For example, in the calendars listed above, calendar NOTEOFMN can be derived from a combination of the WORKDAYS and ENDOFMON calendars.

When calendars are related, a change to one calendar frequently affects other calendars. This can make manual maintenance of calendars time consuming and error prone. The IOABLCAL utility simplifies and automates calendar maintenance.

Through parameters supplied to the utility, the user specifies two existing calendars and the operation (or formula) that determines how the calendars are combined to build a new calendar.

The new calendar created by the utility is a regular calendar. It can be viewed using Option 8 (Calendars) of the IOA Primary Option menu and it can be used as an input calendar in subsequent runs of the utility. Thus, using several basic calendars, numerous other calendars can be created.

It is recommended that all steps that calculate calendars be collected into one job, and that the job be run once a day. This refreshes the calendars in the event that changes are made to the basic calendars.