Setting time constraints

About this task

Time constraints can be specified for both jobs and job streams. For a specific run cycle, you can specify the time that processing begins, by using the keyword at, or the time after which processing is no longer started, by using the keyword until. By specifying both, you define a time window within which a job or job stream runs. Both at and until represent time dependencies.

As an alternative to the until keyword, you can specify the jsuntil keyword. The jsuntil keyword also defines the latest start time of a job stream. It also determines the behavior of the jobs in the job stream when the job stream is approaching its latest start time. Use the jsuntil keyword to avoid that the job stream is either suppressed, canceled, or set to continue (depending on the action specified in the onuntil keyword) if it starts before its latest start time. For example, if you have a job stream with jsuntil set to 10:00 am, and one of the jobs starts running at 9:59 am, the job and its successors run as scheduled.

There is also a major difference with between the until and jsuntil keywords:
If you specify the until keyword in your job stream definition
This keyword is evaluated also after the job stream has started. As a result, if the latest start time expires before the job stream completes successfully, the action specified in the related onuntil keyword is performed on the job stream and on its jobs, which have not yet started.
If you specify the jsuntil keyword in your job stream definition
This keyword is evaluated only once, as soon as all dependencies of the job stream are satisfied and the job stream state changes to READY. If the latest start time defined using the jsuntil keyword has not expired at this time, it is no longer evaluated and the job stream runs independently of it. However, to prevent the job stream from remaining in READY state indefinitely, two days after the time specified in the jsuntil keyword has expired, the job stream is suppressed by default.

Another time setting that can be specified is the schedtime; it indicates the time that is referred to when calculating jobs and job streams dependencies. You can also specify a repetition rate; for example, you can have HCL Workload Automation launches the same job every 30 minutes between 8:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m.

You can also specify a maximum duration or a minimum duration for a job defined within a job stream. If a job is running and the maximum duration time has been exceeded, then the job can either be killed or can continue to run. If a job does not run long enough to reach the minimum duration time specified, then the job can be set to Abend status, to Confirm status awaiting user confirmation, or it can continue running.

For more information, refer to at, deadline, every (used for jobs), schedtime, until, jsuntil, maxdur, and mindur.