JOB statement
The first statement in every job, giving it a name and telling the system who is running it and how to treat it.
Also written //JOB, job card
The JOB statement opens a piece of JCL. It names the job and carries the information the system needs to schedule and account for it.
The name comes immediately after the two slashes and is up to eight characters. Sites almost always have a convention here, frequently requiring the name to begin with your user ID or a project code so that work can be traced back to its owner.
The parameters that follow vary by site. Accounting information often comes first, then a programmer name. Beyond that come the ones that shape how the job runs: which class it is queued in, where its messages go, how much processor time it may use before being stopped, and who to notify when it finishes.
Because so much of it is site-specific, the practical approach is to copy a working JOB statement from an existing job at your site and change the name. Almost everyone does this, and it saves a lot of rejected submissions.
Related terms
- JCLJob Control Language: the language used to tell the mainframe what programs to run, in what order, and with what files.
- JobA unit of batch work submitted to the system, made up of one or more steps that run in order.
- Job classA single-character label on a job that tells the system what kind of work it is and how to schedule it.
- SubmitHanding JCL to the system to be run, which queues it as a job and gives it a job number.