What Is A Job?
A “job”, or “batch job”, or “job instance” – the terms are synonymous – is the basic unit of work executed on a queue engine. “Job Instance” will be used for maximum clarity.
This discussion about jobs uses Windows as the motif, but the discussion is easily transposed to UNIX, Linux, or iSeries.
Each job instance runs either a exe file or a cmd file (a bat file is a slightly superseded form of a cmd file; bat files are fully supported by Argent). Of course, the cmd file will often execute one or more exe files.
As cmd files are scripts files, they can be of any length, however lengthy cmd files are not recommended when using a scheduling product, as the large cmd file negates the benefits of a scheduler (such as job dependencies).
In the Argent Scheduler, a job instance is defined in, and generated from, a job template – a job template generates or creates more job instances. For example, suppose there was a job template called EVERY_MINUTE which was – surprisingly – defined to run every minute. When this job template was scheduled by the Argent Scheduler to run on an Argent Queue Engine, this single job template generates 1,440 job instances – one for every minute of the day.
If the job template of EVERY_MINUTE was specified to run the job instances on three queue engines, then 4,320 job instances are generated – 1,440 for each of the three Argent Queue Engines.
On the main J1 screen, 4,320 job instances are visible, while on each of the queue engine, that queue engine’s 1,440 job instances are visible. This is shown in the following screenshots.
