General Scheduling Considerations

This document covers the following topics:

Optional Schedule Definition

You need not define a schedule for a network. If no schedule is defined and all schedule definitions are left empty, the network is never activated automatically by the Entire Operations Monitor.

Schedule Extraction Times

All network schedules are checked by the Monitor at least once a day, usually at midnight or after the first start of the Monitor on a new day. The networks with a schedule entry for the current day are activated. If no Earliest Start Time is defined, execution starts immediately after activation, depending on the earliest start time defined at the job level. New or modified networks with a schedule entry for the current day are activated also if the activation time is not reached already.

The extraction date is always used for the job time frame calculation, even if the network is activated some time later than planned, because the Monitor was down.

Manual and Automatic Activations on the same Day

A scheduled activation will not be rejected if a manual or API activation of the same network has already been made for the same day.

Multiple Network Activations

You can define multiple network activations in a network schedule.

For detailed information, see Defining Multiple Network Activations.

Influence of Deactivations on Schedules

The day of the activation is removed during a deactivation from the schedule only, if the planned activation was originated by a schedule extraction by the Monitor. The day of the activation is not removed from the schedule if a manual activation is deactivated.

Imported Schedules

If a schedule is imported by the import/export functions, a check for the current day in the schedule will be performed. If the current day is a schedule day, it will be excluded explicitly from the schedule automatically. If you want make the schedule active for the current day, you must remove this explicit exclusion definition from the schedule.

Reason: The exclusion of the current day during import is done to prevent an unwanted automatic start of an imported job network by the Entire Operations Monitor.

Schedule Dependencies across the Turn of the Year

Schedule dependencies can also be defined across the turn of the year. This applies in particular to the week, which begins in the old year and ends in the new year.

This functions only if the schedules and calendars used are defined for both years.

Using Calendars

You need not use calendars when defining a schedule. If no calendar is specified, all days are treated as workdays.

You may use calendars, which belong to the owner of the network, and calendars of other owners.

If a calendar is specified, a schedule definition date is used only if it is a calendar workday. Networks are not activated on holidays.

For more information on calendars, see the section Calendar Maintenance.

Notes:

  1. The Monitor searches for the calendar under the network owner. If it does not find the calendar, the Monitor searches for it system-wide under SYSDBA.
  2. Calendars are year-dependent. If a calendar cannot be found for the current year, the network is not scheduled and an error message is issued. Be sure to define calendars for the coming year before they are needed. From the month of November of the past year onwards, the Entire Operations Monitor issues warning messages to the log.
  3. Calendars are linked to schedules, not to networks.
  4. A calendar modification causes the automatic recalculation of all linked schedules, and a recalculation of the current schedules of all networks linked to these schedules. This automatic recalculation is performed by the Entire Operations Monitor in the background. Be aware that this may have influence on many networks, and may take some time. To check which networks were affected, check the Entire Operations log.