JCL JOB Statement

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TutorialBrain -Job Card

In JCL, JOB statement is the first statement. JOB statement is mandatory. It supplies a unique identity to the JOB. To schedule the JOB in SPOOL, Job Statement is used by the scheduler to schedule the job in SPOOL. MVS identifies the Name of the Job using this statement. This provides the important parameters which provide the way to run the job. Accounting information of the Job is also provided in Job Statement.

JCL JOB Statement is called ‘JOB CARD’. This includes –

  • Job Name
  • Keyword – JOB
  • Parameters – Positional parameters and Keyword parameters

Job Name in JCL

In JCL, we need to code Job Name first, immediately after the identifiers (//). It can range from 1 character to a maximum of 8 characters. It allows Alphanumeric values.

Few examples of Job Names –
PRINTJOB – This job might be related to printing.
INVOICE1 – This job might be related to invoice generation.
MATEKS – This can be the user id of the user who will submit the job.

Keyword 'JOB'

We need to use ‘JOB’ Keyword to inform the MVS that it is a Job statement.

Parameters

Use parameters to decide how Jobs runs. Parameters help the JES to decide about the priority of the Job, the class to which, the job will belong, maximum CPU time that can be allocated to the job, accounting information of the jobs and much more. The Parameters defined in the ‘JOB card’ are automatically applied to each step of the JCL. In some cases, the same parameter(example, TIME parameter) can be applied at both the Job Card as well as a particular Step level(EXEC level).

Parameters are of 2 types –

  • Positional Parameters
  • Keyword Parameters

Positional Parameters

The Parameters which will follow a fixed position is called Positional Parameters. The Positional parameters always come in a fixed defined order. If you try to change the position of the positional parameters, the JCL will through an error.

There are 2 positional Parameters on Job card-

  • Accounting Information – Group or person who owns the billing of the Job based on CPU time.
  • Programmer Name – Group of person who is responsible for this job. In some cases, this can also be the name of the programmer who created the JCL. If you want to skip this parameter, simply code a comma(,) after the accounting information.

Keyword Parameters

Keyword Parameters are parameters which do not require a fixed position. If you code the keyword parameters in any order, you will not get any error.

Important Keyword Parameters are –

  • CLASS
  • MSGCLASS
  • MSGLEVEL
  • TIME
  • TYPRUN
  • PRTY
  • REGION
  • NOTIFY

Note:
These are some important keyword parameters. All these Parameters are discussed in detail as you move further along with some other less used keyword parameters.

TutorialBrain-Keyword and Positional parameters
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