Delay or Wait in Job Sequence

banactp · Post by **banactp** » Thu Mar 03, 2005 9:46 am

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I could incorporate a variable-length delay into a job sequence?

Specifically, what I'm trying to do is start a job sequence at a random time on a particular day, run up to the last activity in the sequence at normal speed, then delay execution of that last activity until 2:00 AM the next day.

Assume I know the time and date I started the sequence because I've passed that in as a string-type sequence parameter. Don't worry about special situations such as running through midnight.

Any ideas?

TIA,

tpb

Sainath.Srinivasan · Post by **Sainath.Srinivasan** » Thu Mar 03, 2005 9:50 am

Use sleep or nap.

banactp · Post by **banactp** » Thu Mar 03, 2005 9:58 am

Thanks for your prompt reply!

The problem using sleep() is how to calculate the number of seconds.

I'd have to know the difference in seconds between 0200 the next day and now. "Now" is a known quantity, but how would you go about calculating the desired start time? All the nice time and date functions that are available inside a parallel job aren't available to the sequence.

tpb

Sainath.Srinivasan · Post by **Sainath.Srinivasan** » Thu Mar 03, 2005 10:21 am

As you are using a sequence, you can always write a routine with IConv / OConv to get this done.

banactp · Post by **banactp** » Thu Mar 03, 2005 10:31 am

Great idea - just what I needed.

Thanks for your help!

banactp · Post by **banactp** » Thu Mar 03, 2005 12:18 pm

Well, it looks as if I was a bit premature in my celebration. At least I learned something new today (IConv).

Sleep cannot be used in expressions, which is where I was planning to use it (as the condition for a trigger to the next stage.)

So I am back to step one - how can I force a processing delay of arbitrary length between jobs in a parallel job sequence?

tpb

chulett · Post by **chulett** » Thu Mar 03, 2005 12:23 pm

Still think sleep would be your best bet. Write a routine to do the sleeping and use a Routine Activity stage to run it rather than trying to delay in the trigger.

It could even check the current time or job start time as an argument and sleep a computed length of time, I would think.

banactp · Post by **banactp** » Thu Mar 03, 2005 12:51 pm

Excellent!

So, now I've learned two things today (at least), the most important of which is:

You can use server routines to control a parallel job sequence!

Thanks for your assistance!

tpb - DataStage newbie

ray.wurlod · Post by **ray.wurlod** » Thu Mar 03, 2005 2:17 pm

The SLEEP statement has two formats.

Code: Select all

SLEEP seconds
SLEEP hh:mm

But the second format only works within a day. If hh:mm is in the past, SLEEP does not wait. To sleep until 02:00 you need to resort to something like:

Code: Select all

SLEEP 23:59
SLEEP 120
SLEEP 02:00

Or, of course, you can calculate the number of seconds

Code: Select all

SLEEP 86400 - Time() + 7200

banactp · Post by **banactp** » Thu Mar 03, 2005 2:25 pm

I was unaware of the "Sleep HH:MM" format - how did you find out about it?

It is not in the documentation that is displayed when the menu bar Help option is selected from within DataStage. At least, that's not the case with my installation.

tpb
DataStage newbie