Control-M Variable facility

The Variable facility consists of a group of special variables and functions that can be used to make your job processing definitions more dynamic. This facility also enables you to define your own variables.

NOTE: Certain Variable functions and variables work differently for z/OS jobs. Although some of these differences are described in this chapter, BMC recommends that you consult the Control‑M for z/OS User Guide for a more complete description of Variable functionality for z/OS jobs.

Variables enable the automatic assignment of dynamic environmental values to the execution parameters of the job. Before the job is submitted, its variables are resolved by Control-M/Server. The resolved values can then be passed as parameters of the job submission command, and are used for the current execution of the job. The contents of the original job processing definition remain unchanged.

Using variables and functions, you can do the following:

• Access information about the system under which a job is running
• Pass information to a job or modify working parameters of the job
• Pass information in a Notification message or a Do Mail message to a user when the job ends

You cannot include application-specific job parameters in the values of variables. The names of application-specific job parameters are prefixed by two percent signs, the application’s abbreviation and a hyphen (%%SAPR3- for SAP, %%OAP- for Oracle, and so on). Variables in a job processing definition are resolved immediately before the job is submitted, in the order in which they appear in the job processing definition. If a variable is included in the notification, Notify, Action, and Handle Output of the job, the variables are re-evaluated and resolved when these actions are performed.

NOTE: If a job is rerun, the variable statements specified in the Variable Assignment parameter are resolved before those specified using the Set Variable parameter.

For more information about variable types, see Variables. For more information about variable functions, see Variable Expressions.