Exit Program for Tailoring Operational Assistant Backup

You can tailor the Operational Assistant automatic backup by specifying an exit program on the Change Backup (CHGBCKUP) command. If an exit program is specified, that program is called both before the Operational Assistant backup is run and after backup is run. You specify within the exit program when you want your functions to run.

If this program ends abnormally or sends an escape message to its caller when running before the backup, the backup will not continue.

When running backup, you could write your own exit program to back up some additional objects that are not included on the folder or library backup list.

Another example of using an exit program could be when you want to clean up some items before the system does its backup. This would save time and resources by not backing up objects you want deleted.

Refer to Using the Operational Assistant Exit Program for Operational Assistant Backup in the API Examples for an example exit program for backup.

Authorities and Locks

None.

Required Parameter Group

Parameters your exit program should be able to handle are:

Calling product

INPUT; CHAR(10)

The name of the product calling the exit program. This parameter is supplied so that the exit program can tell whether it is called from the iSeries Run Backup (RUNBCKUP) command or from another application. When called from the RUNBCKUP command, the value is QEZBACKUP.

Exit indicator

INPUT; CHAR(10)

Whether this program is called before or after the backup is done. The possible values are:

*BEFORE	This call is before the backup has started.
*AFTER	This call is after the backup has run.

Options

INPUT; CHAR(10)

Indicates that the specified backup options are used. The possible values are:

*DAILY	The daily backup options are used.
*WEEKLY	The weekly backup options are used.
*MONTHLY	The monthly backup options are used.

Device

INPUT; CHAR(40)

The name of up to four devices to be used for the backup. Each device is left-justified on a 10-byte boundary.

Tape set

INPUT; CHAR(4)

The name of the tape set to be used for the backup. Operational Assistant backup combines the tape set name (1 to 4 characters) with volume numbers from 01 to 99 to generate the volume IDs of the tape volumes to be used by the backup.

Return code

INPUT; CHAR(7)

The message ID of the message returned by backup. This is blank before the backup.

Error Messages