Actions

Job definitions have the following actions:

A step gets an error status when one of its job definition jobs runs into a erroneous status. A job chain aborts by default when one of its steps gets an error. This can be overridden by defining a status handler.

Status handlers can be defined at two levels:

A status handler defined at job chain level acts as default for a step. Job chain status handlers are overruled by any triggered step status handler. A status handler is triggered when one or more jobs in a step or in the job chain get a specific job status:

Restart behavior is used to break or continue the submit frame when something unexpected happens. When you break the submit frame, the job definition or job chain does not get submitted again according to the submit frame. By default, a Completed job definition or job chain will continue to get submitted according to the submit frame.

This is the main window of the job chain editor. From here the structure of the job chain can be edited, and other tabs can be accessed that allow you to change the properties of the various parts of the chain:

Most of actions can be accessed in several ways:

You can leave the job chain details pane without saving or canceling the changes. They are stored in memory as long as the browser session exists, they are not committed to the database and have no effect when the job chain is submitted. However, do not edit the same job chain in more than one edit screen.

In the upper right of the job chain box is a white box with a plus (+) or a minus (-). The plus (+) is used to expand the view to show any child components of the part of the chain. The parent and all child components are shown. The minus (-) is used to collapse or hide the child components of the chain. Only the parent is shown.

The empty box with the dashed line outline represents an empty step in the job chain. This empty box is shown at the end of a chain. This is a place holder and shows the end of the chain. The empty box is also shown in the job chain flow when a step has been defined, but no job definitions have been added to the step.

Special care needs to be taken, when you edit a job definition which is currently (re)scheduled; the new job definition will take effect on all jobs that have not reached the Dispatched job status at modification time.

Finding Job Chains

You can search for job chains using filters and the Search Job Chains box on the Job Chains tab. This box is known as the intelliSearch box and located under your username on the top right-hand side of the user interface. Filters allow you to specify a list of objects with static criteria. IntelliSearch allows you to specify complex queries in a simple way using prefixes. Prefixes are used to specify which property you are searching in and have short and long syntaxes. For example, if you want to display all job chains with the term import in the comment, you would use the search criteria as follows:

c:import

You can search more than one property, as follows:

c:import n:BI

See the Advanced Object Search for more information.

The following table illustrates the available prefixes for job chains:

Deleting Job Chains

You can only delete job chains when no other objects relate to them. For example, if the job chain is still referred to in another job chain, for example, the job chain cannot be deleted until all relations have been deleted. You can see relations that relate to the job chain in Related Objects in the lower detail pane and on the show page. Furthermore, jobs of a job chain will prevent you from deleting the job chain, these will not be displayed in the Related Objects table.

The table in related objects contains three columns:

For example, job chains that are called in other job chains, will have the call-reference in Related Objects. The type will be Job, and the Related Object will be the name of the job, for example, if it is the first job in a step, it will be Job 1.

Editing XML Source

You can also edit the XML source directly or copy it into your editor of choice. This is especially handy when you want to perform repetitive tasks such as a Search and Replace. You enable the the XML source tab in the user options by enabling the Allow edit as XML option; see Setting User Parameters. Special care needs to be taken when you edit in XML, as you will have to use entities for special signs, such as the less-than (<) sign, which needs to be replaced with &amp;lt;. Please see XML resources on-line for a list of common XML entities.