An Advanced Job Scheduler

In this article, I’ll be going back to good old green screen, well for some parts of this article!

Nested in the IBM i 7.5 OS announcements made by IBM in May 2022, was the statement that half a dozen or so licensed programs will now be included within the cost of the OS.  Great move IBM!

Some of the products that have been included, that interest me, are:

• XML toolkit
• Performance Tools
• DB2 SQL Developer Kit
• Advanced Job Scheduler

The one of these licensed program I will be taking a look at in this article is the Advanced Job Scheduler.

You can download the disk image for this product at IBMs ESS (Entitled Systems Support) site https://www.ibm.com/servers/eserver/ess/index.wss

This license program can be found on the disk image labelled B_GROUP1_04 (For the UK).

Your usual procedures for installing licensed programs can be followed.

Don’t forget to load the latest PTFs after the install and add the product license (this should be on your IBM ESS portal).

Here we can see my server with the new product installed.

Please note that the latest version for 5770JS is V7R2.0

The easiest way to start the job scheduler is by entering the command

GO JS

Let me run through the options we have here.

1. This is our main entry into the job scheduler, and is the equivalent of the standard job scheduler provided with IBM i
2. This option is used display and maintain historical information and logs
3. Option three is the place to go if you need any of the schedulers jobs
4. The Job Controls option is where we can work with job defaults and calendars, plus library lists and applications
5. Option five is used for controlling the scheduler, we can stop and start it.  Also, we can see the entries of the traditional job scheduler
6. If you need any reports, option ten is the place for you

Before we get onto the main player, option one – Work with jobs, I want to show you how we can easily convert our existing scheduled jobs into the advanced one.

Convert Original Entries

If you need to convert your original job scheduled entries to the advanced version, IBM provides a means to achieve this.

By taking option 5 – System controls, then option 7 – Work with Operating System job schedule entries, we can see our original entries. 

This screen allows you to add jobs to the advanced scheduler by placing an 8 against the job you wish to add.  The original job scheduled entry is then held to avoid duplicate jobs running.

The screen below shows our original entries.

Placing an 8 alongside an entry will prompt to add a new entry on to the Advanced Job Scheduler.

Job Groups

One great advantage the Advanced Job Scheduler has over the traditional scheduler is the ability to group jobs together.  This also allows jobs to be dependant upon another.  If one job in the group fails, all other jobs do not run.

Let me run through the process to accomplish this.

Firstly, we must create a new Job Group. 

I’ll show the traditional Navigator for i method of creating a job group.

Using the figure below, navigate your way through the options to find the Job Group.

Fill both tabs, shown below, to create your new group.

We then add our jobs to this new group.

In the figure below, we can see that I have added three jobs to the STR_OSS group.  They start our open source applications, start the Maria database server and start the PostgreSQL server.

Now the jobs will be run in the sequence I stated.  If the first job fails, the rest of the jobs do not run.  Just what I wanted.

To see the jobs I’ve just added on the 5250 session, we run the command

WRKJOBJS JOB(*ALL STR_OSS) (Work with Jobs using JS)

Stating a group name of str_oss

Here we see the three jobs we added.

As theses are part of the STR_OSS group, only the first entry has a scheduled date and time, the rest just follow on and complete successfully, hopefully!

Running Immediately

We can run all the jobs in the group by selecting all the jobs then take the action to Run Now

Our jobs are now executing in the sequence we stated.

Be Aware!

Please note that currently, the advanced job scheduler is not part of the new Navigator for i product.  You will have to use the original Navigator if you want a graphical interface to this product.

You can help get the advanced job scheduler included within the new Navigator for i by voting for the inclusion at the RFE site.  The link is here.

If, and/or when, this product is included in the new Navigator for i, I will update this article showing how to use the new interface.

Conclusion

If you have never used the advance job scheduler, take a look, it has some great features over the traditional one.

Grouping jobs together is an excellent way of providing a start-up program, that has all the necessary steps without having to recompile any CL program if changes are required.

All the examples I have written for this article, and previous ones, can be found on my open-source repository on GitHub, which can be found at https://github.com/formaserve/f_Learning

If you have any questions, either on this article, or anything else on the IBM i, use the comments below, or send me a message on twitter @AndyYouens

Andy Youens is an IBM i consultant/instructor at Milton Keynes, UK-based FormaServe Systems with over 40 years IBM midrange experience. 

IBM Champion