Global variable scope and longevity

Hi guys

I'm trying to use JAL global variables to get information between non-dependent scripts, for example date information to indicate what processing day it is, even when the processing time crosses midnight.

So for example 1 job dims and sets a current date global variable at say 6pm. Another job which runs at say 2am the next morning might use that date to check which file dates it needs to grab.

It's not working for me; 24x7 is operating as a service; in the 6pm job I dim a global boolean called global.eom which i then compare the current date to the @ml end of month macro-parameter and set to true if it is. In the 2am job then I try to use that global variable to make a decision, and it consistently fails to see the global variable claiming it is undefined. The setting job runs fine.

action job code snippet

dim( controlfile, string)
If( GLOBAL.eom, setcontrol3, setcontrol2)

setcontrol3:
Set( controlfile, "control3.txt")
GoTo checkforcontrol

etc

begin processingday job

Dim GLOBAL.procdate, string
Set GLOBAL.procdate, @T"yyyymmdd"
Dim GLOBAL.eom, boolean
IsEqual( GLOBAL.procdate, @ML"yyyymmdd", GLOBAL.eom )

Dim filename, string
Set( filename, "d:\\POC\\processingday.ini" )

Both jobs run synchronously.

The odd thing is that other operations like this seem to work? the first example works nicely....

Cheers

This may happen if the jobs are setup to run detached. Detached jobs don't have access to the shared memory and that's what stops bad jobs from reaching and affecting main scheduler processes. Also job related resource leaks don't affect the scheduler processes.

You can turn off the job detached property and allow jobs to share global variables. I suggest indeed not to do that and instead use other memory independent methods for storing shared data, for example, INIFileGet and INIFileSet, RegistryKetGet and REgistryKeySet, FileSave and FileReadLine/FileReadAll, DatabaseGet and so on....

The only 2 cases when you really should use global variables are: (1) you need to reset all variables on the scheduler restart; (2) or if you run jobs concurrently on multiple systems and you need to dynamically pass data between jobs using GetRemoteVariable and SetRemoteVariable commands.

Thank you

Will global variables be shared between different queues?

Do they time out or anything like that?

Yes, jobs running in different queues share global variables.