Overview of JCL and AutoEdit Facility

In the production environment, it is often necessary to manually modify JCL prior to submission of a job, as in the following cases:

• changing a parameter or a date card
• supplying tape numbers in JCL procedures
• eliminating steps under different run conditions (for example, end of month processing versus normal daily run)

Manual modification of JCL is inconvenient at best, and it may, in fact, be error prone and lead to serious problems.

The AutoEdit facility offers an automated alternative to manual JCL modification. This facility permits AutoEdit terms (variables, functions, and similar terms, described in this chapter) to be specified in the JCL in place of values that change from job submission to job submission. At time of job submission, these terms are resolved to their actual values.

The inclusion of AutoEdit terms in the job stream can eliminate the need to continually change the JCL. Some AutoEdit terms can also be used in job scheduling definitions.

AutoEdit terms are prefaced by a %% symbol, which distinguishes them from terms that are not AutoEdit terms. For example, the term %%ODAY is recognized as an AutoEdit term.

Note: AutoEdit terms must be placed within the job stream submitted by Control-M, not within a catalogued JCL procedure. The use of AutoEdit terms within started tasks (STCs) is not supported.

The components of the AutoEdit facility are described briefly in the following sections and in greater detail later in this chapter.