Job dependency
A rule that a job must wait for something else first, usually another job finishing successfully.
Also written predecessor, successor, job trigger, job network, job stream
A batch run is not a list of separate jobs. It is a network of jobs that depend on each other. A job that must finish first is a predecessor. A job that waits for it is a successor. The interest calculation cannot start until today's transactions have been posted, and the statements cannot start until interest is calculated.
Jobs can wait for other things too. A file-arrival dependency starts a job when a file from another system appears. A time dependency stops a job starting before a set time. A resource dependency stops two jobs that use the same file from running at once.
The scheduler holds all these rules and starts each job when its conditions are met. When a job fails, its successors do not start, which is usually what you want, because they would process incomplete data.
That also means one failure can hold up many later jobs. Knowing a job's successors, and which of them are on the critical path, tells you how urgent a failure is.
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- Batch schedulerSoftware that submits production jobs automatically in the right order, at the right time, based on what has already succeeded.
- Critical pathThe chain of dependent batch jobs that decides when the whole batch run finishes; any delay on it delays the finish.
- Batch windowThe period, usually overnight, in which batch work has to finish before the business needs the systems back.
- RerunRunning a job again after it failed or produced wrong results, either from the beginning or from a chosen step.
- Control-MBMC's batch scheduling product, which decides when each job runs based on times, dependencies and conditions.