Terminology
The following terms are used to describe branch jobs:
- Parent (sometimes referred also to as evaluated job)
- The job whose status or other properties you want to evaluate.
- Condition
- The condition that you are running against the parent job. The condition can be as simple as look at parent status or more complex.
- Good child
- The closest successor to the branch job that is to be run if the condition is evaluated as TRUE.
- Bad child
- The closest successor to the branch job that is to be stopped if the condition is evaluated as FALSE.
- Branch
- A sequence of jobs that are ordered by using the FOLLOWS dependency.
- Run branch
- The branch selected to run, based on the condition result. The run branch starts with the good child if the condition is evaluated as TRUE or with the bad child if the condition is evaluated as FALSE.
- Stop branch
- The branch selected to stop, based on the condition result. The stop branch starts with the bad child if the condition is evaluated as TRUE or with the good child if the condition is evaluated as FALSE
- Input parameter
- Argument that is passed to the specific branch job. For some parameters, if you do not specify any value the default is used.
- Branch job suffix
- Differentiates multiple occurrences of branch jobs within the same job stream.
Figure 1 illustrates the following terms, which are used to define a job stream managed by one or more branch jobs:
- Parent
- Good child and good branch
- Bad child and bad branch
- Evaluation of job status against condition
Figure 1. Terms related to
job stream definition
Figure 2 illustrates
additional terms that are used during the job stream run:
- Run branch
- Stop branch
It also shows the difference between the terms good and bad, and run and stop. These terms are the same only when CONDITION=TRUE. If CONDITION=FALSE, then the run branch corresponds to the bad branch and the stop branch corresponds to the good branch. This is the concept of the branch job evaluating logic.
Figure 2. Terms related
to job stream run (concrete job stream instance)