Interactive jobs

An interactive job is a job that starts when a user signs on to a display station and ends when the user signs off. For the job to run, the subsystem searches for the job description, which can be specified in the workstation entry or the user profile.

Interactive jobs require continual two-way communications between the user and the iSeries™ to perform a task. An interactive job begins when a user signs on to a system. The system requests signon information. If the signon request is accepted by the system, then the system creates the interactive job. The system then asks the user to supply a request. The user enters a request, and the system responds by processing the request. This pattern is repeated until the user ends the interactive job by signing off the system, or the job ends due to an application exception or device error recovery.

If an interactive job is part of a group of jobs or a pair of jobs, then it will have one of the following job types:

Interactive - Group

An Interactive - Group job is part of a group of jobs that is associated with a single display device.

Interactive - System request

An Interactive - System request job is one of a pair of jobs that is associated with each other by the system request function.

Did you know? You can sign on to the system in two ways. You can manually enter the system by using a user id and password. You can also create a program to automatically send the user id and password to the server, thereby bypassing the signon screen.

• How an interactive job starts
  When a user signs on to the system, the subsystem gathers information from several system objects before the interactive job is ready.
• Disconnect interactive jobs
  When the Disconnect Job (DSCJOB) command is called, the job is disconnected and the signon display is shown again. To connect with the job again, sign on to the same device from which you disconnected. Another interactive job may be started on the device under a different user name.
• I/O error for job requester device
  A requester device is a workstation from which a user can log on to a domain and use network resources. The Device Recovery Action (DEVRCYACN) job attribute specifies what action to take when an I/O error occurs for a job’s requester device.
• Interactive jobs and routing steps
  Before the initial menu is called the routing data is compared with the routing entries in the subsystem description. When a match is made, the program specified in the routing entry is called and the routing step is started.
• Programs that control the routing step
  To determine the best approach for a particular job, you must first determine which program should control the routing step.
• Workstation versus user based routing
  After you have determined which program controls the routing step, you must determine if routing is to be based on the workstation from which the job was started, or on the user (user profile) who signed on.
• When jobs end at the same time
  Sometimes, jobs end at the same time. For example, a network error occurs and the job attributes are set to *ENDJOB or *ENDJOBNOLIST. In addition to the job ending, the following device recovery actions occur.