Overview

In the production environment, JCL must often be manually modified 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 the JCL is inconvenient at best, and it can be error-prone and lead to serious problems. The JCL and AutoEdit facility offers an automated alternative to manual JCL update.

The JCL and AutoEdit facility enables AutoEdit terms, variables, functions, and control statements to be specified in the JCL, in place of values that change from job submission to job submission. AutoEdit terms are prefixed by a pair of percent symbols, %%, which distinguishes them from other terms. For example, the term %%ODAY is recognized as an AutoEdit term.

At time of job submission, AutoEdit terms in the JCL are resolved to, or replaced by, their actual values. The inclusion of AutoEdit terms in the job stream can eliminate the need to change JCL once it is defined.

Certain AutoEdit terms can also be used within job scheduling definitions, and can include system and user-defined variables, functions, operators, and control statements.

Control-M provides an AutoEdit simulation facility that enables you to check the results of AutoEdit inclusion before you run a job in the production environment.

You can also define Global AutoEdit variables in a database that allows the variables to be accessed and updated by different jobs.

In this chapter, you will

• see the results of using AutoEdit terms in the JCL of the job, and examine a number of AutoEdit variables
• use one or two AutoEdit functions
• use AutoEdit terms in the job scheduling definition
• look at the online utility facility and use the AutoEdit simulation facility to check the results of our AutoEdit usage