Invoke CA7 commands from Batch terminal - use of SASBSTR

CA7 is a product of Computer Associates and is a scheduling tool for batch jobs in mainframe. When the number of jobs to be executed are astronomical, it is difficult to manage the jobs manually. So we need a tool like CA7 to manage the same. Manipulation of jobs, predecessor and triggers are done through CA7 panels. But sometimes we need to define hundreds of jobs to CA7, it is advisable to use batch terminal to do the same. Also batch terminals are less prone to errors. Batch terminals are a set of CA7 commands in a member of a partitioned dataset which is input to a CA7 batch program and submitted using a JCL

The program which executes the CA7 commands in batch is called SASSBSTR. The list of commands are put into a member of a partitioned dataset and given as an input to the program through SYSIN DD statement in the JCL. When executing the SASSBSTR program, the SYSIN input statements are copied into the input dataset called CA7. Communication dataset informs CA7 that there are commands waiting in the input dataset. These are read and processed by CA7. Any output is written to the output dataset. When all the commands have been processed, SASSBSTR copies the contents of the output dataset to SYSPRINT. Have a look into the below diagram

CA7 commands from batch terminal

Now, lets have the JCL to execute the CA7 from batch terminal.

//@SASBSTR EXEC PGM=SASBSTR

//UCC7CMDS DD DSN=TTOS.NCA7A01.COMMDS,DISP=SHR

//SYSDUMP DD SYSOUT=*

//SYSPRINT DD SYSOUT=*

//SYSOUT DD SYSOUT=*

//SYSIN DD *

LJOB,JOB=SJABCD7,LIST=ALL     <==  CA7 command goes here

/*

//*

All relevant information for the particular job SJABCD7 will be listed in SYSOUT since we gave SYSPRINT DD SYSOUT=*.

Check the commonly used CA7 commands in this page. We can use these commands in the SYSIN DD* statements.

Explanation of JCL:

SASSBSTR is the program which executes the batch terminal

UCC7CMDS DD statement is a communication dataset which is used to read the CA7 commands from SYSIN DD Statements into the input dataset.

The CA7 commands are embedded within the SYSIN DD statement.All valid commands can be used here. Usually the programs are written in a cataloged procedure and the batch terminal is given as an input to the program. The output can be stored in a dataset.