Timing considerations
When HCL Workload Automation checks dependencies on z/OS jobs not launched by HCL Workload Automation, certain timing issues are critical to ensuring that any associated job dependencies are correctly resolved. For the correct resolution of these external dependencies, HCL Workload Automation must attempt to resolve the dependency at least once before the z/OS job is submitted. After the z/OS job has been submitted and has successfully completed, the next periodic check of the dependency by HCL Workload Automation can manage the dependency.
- If the external dependency on an HCL Workload Automation z/OS job is the only dependency in the job, the dependency is checked immediately after the plan is generated or extended. However, as the plan might have a period of several days, weeks, or months, this might not be very frequently.
- Subsequently to the first check, the dependency is checked with a frequency determined by the HCL Workload Automation configuration parameters.
- If the external dependency is preceded by another dependency, the external dependency is not checked until the other dependency is resolved.
Thus, when creating external dependencies in HCL Workload Automation on HCL Workload Automation z/OS jobs, you should schedule the job so that the first dependency check takes place before the z/OS job is submitted.
If this synchronization is not taken into account, HCL Workload Automation might wait indefinitely to resolve a job dependency. A similar problem can occur as the result of a communication failure between the z/OS and HCL Workload Automation environments that prevents HCL Workload Automation from determining the status of a z/OS job to satisfy a job dependency.