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Batch Job Dependencies with Advanced Job Scheduler

It doesn’t matter if I’m talking about the IBM Advanced Job Scheduler for i5/OS (AJS) to folks at COMMON or while training IT shops, at some point the conversation always finds its way to Job Dependencies. But I’m not surprised. Of all the great features in the product—like e-mailing spooled files, Multiple Scheduling Environments and Workflow Manager—Job Dependencies has to rank at the top of the “Features most used by customers” list.

Most shops have at least one and possibly many batch-job streams where one job is dependent on another’s completion. For AJS, that’s a walk in the park. You just create a dependency link where you define the job that must run before (predecessor) another job (successor) or, JOBA must complete before JOBB. The number of dependent jobs is endless. You may have the need for multiple predecessors before a successor can run (e.g., JOBA and JOBB must complete before JOBC). You can also have the opposite where a single predecessor must complete before multiple successors can run (e.g., JOBA must complete before JOBB and JOBC).

Running Predecessor Jobs Before Successor Jobs

During these conversations one question always crops up: “Do the predecessor jobs have to complete normally before the successor jobs can run?” That’s a great question and the answer is no. You define whether the predecessor jobs must complete normally before the successor jobs can run.

When setting up dependency chains, many times the only job that’s scheduled with a date and time to run is the first job in the chain. The other jobs will follow in the order in which they’ve been specified based on their predecessor job. But sometimes it’s necessary to schedule multiple jobs in a dependency chain. For example, JOBA is scheduled to run at 9 p.m. and JOBB is scheduled at 11 p.m. If JOBC is dependent on both JOBA and JOBB running, it would wait until both ran before starting. One thing to keep in mind is job dependencies have no date and time boundaries. If JOBA is scheduled to run at 8 p.m. every Monday and JOBB is scheduled to run at 10 p.m. every Wednesday, and a dependency has been set up so JOBA must complete before JOBB runs, then the Monday run of JOBA will be flagged and in effect until Wednesday’s run of JOBB.

Viewing Dependencies

Another popular question is, “How can I see my dependencies?” On a 5250 screen you can use Option 10 from Work With Jobs Using Job Scheduler (WRKJOBJS) on any job in the stream and step forward and backward through the dependency chain using the F7 and F8 keys. You can print a report of all the dependency chains using Option 8 from the Job Reports (JSRPT) menu. Using the GUI for AJS inside System i Navigator, you can see the dependency chain in tree form (Figure 1).

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