Re: How do you determine when numerous SBMJOBs have ALL finished

On 9/12/2011 2:09 PM, CRPence wrote:

I think it's a matter of personal style. Passing a list requires
maintaining that list every time a new job is ended or a job name
changes. Locking a data area works pretty well for me.

Perhaps. Updating a list within the controlling program seems to me
much less work and less error-prone than the maintenance required to
ensure that the [first] called program in each additional submitted job
is properly implemented to get the lock.

Eh, the delay in the submitted job is a belt and suspenders approach. If I put a two minute DLYJOB in the monitor program, I would be able to forego the delays in any of the jobs and indeed wouldn't even need the last job to be the submitter. Any system activity that prevents a job from starting for two minutes is going to need more attention than my little monitor. But regardless, my approach has an Achilles heel, however miniscule, that the message-based approach avoids. Is it worth the cost?

I would prefer to be able to
add a new submitted job without having to code actions in external
entities; to instead take advantage of what is already provided by the
OS. Plus if one of the jobs [added] is just a CL command versus a
program, I would not even need to have a CLP to effect any locking, I
would need effectively only to update the list of jobs being submitted.

Besides, I would probably implement a solution that used a CPC1221
"job submitted" message sent to the same message queue coded on each
SBMJOB request. The final job would, for each job named as submitted in
one message, find the corresponding "job completed" message on that same
queue, with continued polling until every "job submitted" message has a
pairing of "job completed"; reacting in some way to any failure versus
successful completion code perhaps as an early exit from polling.

Something like the pseudo-code:

jnq=sbmrqs('call pgmx') /* sbmjob cmd('...') msgq(l/mq) */
sndmsg msgid(cpc1221) msgdta(jnq) tomsgq(l/mq)
/* above two stmts repeat for each [added] request, then: */
jnq=sbmrqs('call wrapup') /* pgm wrapup awaits cpc1221\cpf1241 pairs
for above repeated paired requests, before continuing */

And at that point, you don't really need the initial message to be CPC1221; it could be whatever message you choose. And now you're designing a lightweight dispatcher, which is probably not a bad idea, but whereas you have the voice in your head that nags about Murphy and that voice whispers to me as well, I have another voice equally as loud that really, really pounds me about over-engineering.

So while the message queue option is admittedly more bullet-proof and more extendable than my simple lock-wait mechanism, it falls into the realm of KISS vs. Murphy. Always an interested balancing act.

Joe