When an operation is eligible to be started

An operation can be started when:
  • The workstation is active (that is, the controller can communicate with it), is open, and has an available parallel server (or the WA has been requested not to use parallel servers in scheduling decisions).
  • The status of the operation is either ready or arrived, and the manual hold (MH) CP function has not been specified.
  • The manual release (MR) CP function has been specified, following a manual hold (MH) request for the operation.
  • The duration of the operation is such that the operation can be processed during the time that its associated workstation remains open. This is dependent on what has been specified in the shutdown policy defined in the SHUTDOWN parameter of the JTOPTS initialization statement. See Customization and Tuning.
  • Either the operation does not use any special resources, or it uses special resources that are available and that can satisfy the allocation criteria.

    The operation specifies a quantity and type for each allocation. Quantity is a number from 1 to 999999, or blank. Blank means the current maximum quantity of the special resource. The type is either shared (other operations can share the allocation concurrently) or exclusive (the operation must be the only user of the allocated quantity).

    If an operation needs a special resource that is not defined in the current plan, HCL Workload Automation for Z uses the DYNAMICADD keyword of the RESOPTS statement to determine if it creates the required special resource dynamically.

  • Job submission has not been prevented for this operation.
  • The execute (EX) CP function has been requested for this operation.
  • There have been no errors during a previous attempt to start this operation.
  • This is either a normal (non-time-dependent) operation, or it is a time job that can be started now.

    A time job is an operation on a computer workstation that should start at a particular time, as opposed to the normal HCL Workload Automation for Z situation where an operation is started when all its predecessors are complete.

    A time job can have the cancel-if-late attribute. If so, it might not be started after its start time has passed, depending on the SUPPRESSPOLICY parameter specified for the HCL Workload Automation for Z system in the JTOPTS initialization statement. Refer to Customization and Tuning.

  • Either the operation does not use any workstation resources, or it does not use more workstation resources than are available.

    A workstation resource is related to a specific workstation. For example, you can specify that one workstation has 2 optical readers and 10 tape units. Operations that need tapes or optical readers should then be defined so that HCL Workload Automation for Z knows how many are needed to start the operation. If this is done, operations do not be start (by the WA) on this workstation unless there are enough tapes and optical readers available.