HP 3000 Manuals

Using the 900 Series HP 3000: Fundamental Skills Module 1: Communicating with Yo

Lesson 2 Session and Jobs--What Are They? 

Lesson 2 presents sessions and jobs.

Once you are logged on, you can work with your
HP 3000 computer in two ways:

   *   in a session 

   *   by submitting a job 

Sessions 

Logging on is the way you that begin any interaction with your MPE/iX
system.  A session begins the moment you that log on (HELLO) and ends
when you log off (BYE).

MPE/iX is an interactive system.  This means that what you enter is acted
upon immediately by the computer.

In a session, this is what happens:

   *   You enter instructions to the computer at the keyboard, one
       command at a time.

   *   As you type it, your command appears on the screen.  When you
       press Return, the computer attempts to carry out the command.

   *   The computer gives some response on the screen to each command
       that you try.  It is a two-way conversation between you and the
       computer.

Working in a session is sometimes called interactive processing.

Jobs 

When you work in a session, you see the results of your instructions as 
they execute.

You use a job when you want the computer to carry out several
instructions on its own, perhaps after you leave for home.

You do not have to be logged on when the job starts, or when it ends.
The job prints out a report for you, telling you what it did and whether
it succeeded in doing what you wanted it to do.

Advantages of using a job.   

   *   You can process all of the commands in a job file at any time with
       a single command.  Your terminal is available to do other work
       while the job is processed.

       You can schedule a job to begin at 3:00 A.M. You could schedule a
       job to begin next year, on a particular day, at a particular time.
       Starting a job on its way to execution is called submitting a job.
       You may hear the term streaming, because the command used to
       launch a job is STREAM.

   *   A job that is properly created and started will stop itself at the
       end.  At the end, the computer prepares a summary of the job in a
       job listing and prints the summary on the computer's printer.

Disadvantages of using a job.   

   *   If an error occurs while a job is running, the job may stop
       running.  Then you have to study your job listing in order to
       discover what went wrong.

Running a job is often called batch processing.  You will hear it called
a batch job, too.

MPE/iX 5.0 Documentation