On 15 June 2016 at 16:38, Charles Mills <[email protected]> wrote:

> Yeah, I know, JOBnnnnn or Tnnnnnnn.
>
> Is there a formal description somewhere? Where?
>

It seems to me there are at least two quite different questions here:

1) What is the acceptable syntax for a Job ID?

2) What formats are seen "in the wild", and perhaps

3) What are the circumstances in which each can be generated?

I think the answer to (1) is straightforward: The (perhaps obsolescent but
still valid) description of a Job ID as supported by TSO's IKJPARS is "The
jobname can have an optional job identifier. Each job identifier is a
maximum of eight alphanumeric characters, the first of which must be an
alphabetic character or one of the special characters $, #, @." So the TSO
commands CANCEL,STatus, and OUTput  will enforce this, and perhaps others
will too. Whether anything in the MVS Subsystem Interface enforces these
rules I don't know, but I'd guess it's very unlikely. How it would return
an indication of invalidity is one question, aside from the general
un-SSIness of checking. So then of course each Job Entry Subsystem can do
whatever it likes as fas as checking/enforcing, and those rules will
presumably be stricter than the basic syntax.

(2) has been much discussed already. I must say I've never seen an
Annnnnnn-format Job ID, but surely APPC is more than obsolescent now, and
has been for many years. In theory anyone can write a JES, and that JES
could have whatever rules it likes, but in practice I don't think anyone is
really going to be writing a JESx except perhaps as a learning exercise.

(3) is a matter of anecdotes combined with actual knowledge of the code.
Job IDs are generated by various programs, and can also come in off the
wire via NJE. Remotes systems such as RSCS don't have the concept of a Job
ID, so normally JES2 generatoes a J-type one of its own. If there is an
inbound one that doesn't match the rules, then what? I don't know, but it
shouldn't be hard to find out. Ah - looking at the NJE headers reminds me
that it's a binary (16-bit!) job *number* that comes in, and then JES2 has
bit flags to say that it's a batch job or a started task. No TSO... Anyway
- Friday speculation. Worth every penny you pay for it...

Tony H.

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