All of the work done on the iSeries™ server is submitted through the work management function. On an iSeries server, you can design specialized operating environments to handle different types of work to satisfy the requirements of your server.
However, when the operating system is installed, it includes a work management environment that supports interactive and batch processing, communications, and spool processing.
On the server, all user jobs operate in an environment called a subsystem, defined by a subsystem description, where the server coordinates processing and resources. Users can control a group of jobs with common characteristics independently of other jobs if the jobs are placed in the same subsystem. You can easily start and end subsystems as needed to support the work being done and to maintain the performance characteristics you want.
The basic types of jobs that run on the server are interactive, communications, batch, spooled, autostart, and prestart.
An interactive job starts when you sign on a workstation and ends when you sign off. An Advanced Program-to-Program Communication (APPC) batch job is a job started from a program start request from another system. A non-communications batch job is started from a job queue. Job queues are not used when starting a communications batch job. Spooling functions are available for both input and output. Autostart jobs perform repetitive work or one-time initialization work. Autostart jobs are associated with a particular subsystem, and each time the subsystem is started, the autostart jobs associated with it are started. Prestart jobs are jobs that start running before the remote program sends a program start request.