Spooler Plus Programmer's Guide

Introduction to the Spooler Plus Subsystem

Spooler Plus Programmer’s Guide—522293-003

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Controlling Jobs

The Spoolcom JOB subcommands HOLD, START, and DELETE allow a job to be put

on hold, taken off hold, or deleted from the spooler subsystem. To change job

attributes, the job must be in the hold state. You can place a job on hold at any time

except when it is open.

Placing a job on hold takes the job off any device queue that it is on. If a job has

multiple occurrences, then all occurrences of the job lose their place in their respective

device queues as a result of a HOLD command. Any occurrence currently printing is

also placed on hold.

When a job enters the ready state and a device is connected to the job’s location, it is

added to a device queue. Putting a job on hold and then immediately taking it off hold

causes the job to be removed from the device queue and then added to the queue.

This causes the job to lose its place in the device queue.

The Spooler and Batch Jobs

In the spooler, a batch job is a group of associated spooler jobs. Typically, these are

jobs from a NetBatch application. Each spooler job has certain attributes, called key

attributes, which allow jobs to be linked together in a continuous listing when printed.

The values of these key attributes when the spooler collector is opened dictate whether

or not a job enters the queue as part of a batch job. Any job that does not meet the

key attribute criteria remains a normal job.

The first job that has all the necessary key attributes for a batch job is assigned a batch

number by the spooler. Any subsequent job whose attributes match those of the first

job in the batch job is linked to that same batch job and assigned the same batch

number.

The meanings of the key attributes that determine whether a spooler job is part of a

batch job are as follows:

JOBID This identifier is the same for all jobs in a batch job. A job that is not part

of a batch job does not have this identifier. (JOBID can be set through a

TACL RUN command or a DEFINE for the application generating the

batch job.)

FORM Each job in a batch job must use the same print device and paper.

OWNER Each job in a batch job must be owned by the same user.

LOC The device associated with each logical location within the spooler must

be the same for all members of a batch job. A location name has two

parts: #group.destination, where destination represents the

device. You can specify the destination in the location name used by the

application or configured for the location through a Spoolcom DEV

command. For more information see the Spooler Plus Utilities Reference

Manual.