Automatic Job Flow Adjustment

Predecessor and successor job flows are established through the use of prerequisite conditions that are defined in the job scheduling definition. Successor and predecessor jobs are identified as either "immediate" or "eventual," relative to a specified job:

• An immediate predecessor and successor relationship exists between jobs when one job is directly dependent on prerequisite conditions added by the other job.
• An eventual predecessor and successor relationship exists between jobs if their dependency is indirectly established through a "chain" of immediate predecessor and successor jobs.

From the network of predecessor and successor jobs, critical paths can be identified. A critical path is a chain of jobs that must be executed in their appropriate sequence in order for a specified job to run. A job can have more than one critical path, if different jobs set the same OUT condition, or if a job has OR logic in its IN conditions.

The Job Dependency Network screen, accessed through the Active Environment screen, enables you to view the network of predecessor and successor jobs for a specified job and determine the critical paths for the job.

Although it is prerequisite conditions that define predecessor and successor job relationships, the actual job flow along a critical path can be greatly impacted by the following runtime scheduling criteria in the job scheduling definition:

Table 15 Runtime Scheduling Criteria

In some cases, it might become desirable to adjust the priorities or due out dates and times of certain job orders. For example,

• A high priority successor job is waiting for the submission (and completion) of a lower priority predecessor job.
• A predecessor job cannot terminate early enough for a successor job to terminate by the due out date and time of the successor.

Both types of job flow adjustments can be requested from the Job Dependency Network screen:

• Priority Propagation

  The priority value of each non-Held predecessor and successor job is checked and (if necessary) modified so all jobs in the chain have a priority, and no job has a lower priority than any of its successor jobs.

• Deadline Adjustment

  Starting with the latest eventual successor job in the job flow, the anticipated elapsed time (that is, anticipated execution time) is subtracted from the DUE OUT date and time to determine DUE OUT date and time of the immediate predecessors of that job.

  This process of subtracting elapse times of a job to determine the DUE OUT date and time of the immediate predecessor jobs are repeated until the DUE OUT date and time of the initial or current job is determined.

  • If the user entered an ELAPSE time value in the Online Tracking and Control facility Zoom screen, this value is used for the above calculation.
  • If the user did not enter an ELAPSE time value, the anticipated elapse time is determined by the average runtime taken from the Control-M Statistics file.

Note the following points:

• By subtracting the ELAPSE time of a job from its DUE OUT date and time, the Control-M monitor calculates a DUE IN date and time (that is, the date and time by which the job must be submitted) for each job. The DUE IN time, ELAPSE time, and DUE OUT time are also displayed in the Job Dependency Network screen.
• The ELAPSE time, DUE OUT date and time, DUE IN date and time, and PRIORITY values for a job are also displayed in the Zoom screen, which is accessed through the Active Environment screen.
• DUE OUT date and time, ELAPSE time and PRIORITY values can also be manually modified in the Zoom screen, but it is recommended that this not be done, and that automatic job flow adjustment be requested instead.

Deadline adjustment will work correctly only if all the jobs have the same time zone, or all the jobs have no time zone.