NATURAL PROCESS Extends NATURAL to Operations Center

NATURAL ADV. FACILITIES
continued from page 11
request of the asynchronous NAT-
SPOOL printer task to a remote
region providing the devices to
support the SPOOL request. In a
heavily-used CICS environment us-
ing MRO, it is common to have a
specific TERMINAL region sup-
porting all or most devices used by
one or more application regions.
3. NATSPOOL in Batch
The current release of NATURAL
AF V1.3 already supports BATCH
NATSPOOL. From batch, reports
may be written to the NAF spool
file. The START task to the CICS-
owned printer may only be com-
menced from NATURAL running
as a CICS-owned task. If a printer
task is printing at the same time as
the print SPOOL created from
batch with the same DESTFORM,
the print QUEUE will print; other-
wise, it takes on the TO BE
PRINTED status. The specifications
of the PRINTER parameter can be
overwritten by the DD statement for
CMPRT##.
If the SPOOL file is an ADABAS
defined file, NATSPOOL can be in-
voked under CICS and BATCH con-
currently. Under certain
circumstances, the same job num-
ber may then be assigned by NAT-
SPOOL to different printout queues.
However, this symptom causes no
problems and can be ignored.
If the spool file is a VSAM data set,
creation of queues in batch is only
possible if control has not been
given to CICS (i.e., CICS has not
opened the file for update). This is
due to VSAM provisions for con-
trolling data sharing in a single-
system environment
(SHAREOPTION).
NATBATCH, when relinked, must
contain NATSPOOL and NATPARM
containing the necessary SPOOL
parms, such as FSPOOL and
PRINTER, or they may be specified
dynamically. NSPPPARM must also
be linked to provide the print work
area. The parms NATPCT, NATPPT,
TRACE, and TRANP are ignored
in batch.
4. DYNAMIC System File
Specification
By specifying any of the parameters
DBID, FNR, FNAT, FSEC, and
FSPOOL dynamically (i. e., when
starting a NATURAL session, the
corresponding system file(s) in
NATPARM can be overwritten by
the user), the actual values will
then be transferred by the originat-
ing terminal task to the printer
task. It should be noted that in or-
der to override FSPOOL, only
FSPOOL may be specified as an
overrider. DBID and FNR will not
point to the correct SPOOL FILE.
Once the printer task has been
started, it will observe these pa-
rameters as long as the printer task
is active. Queues will only be
printed from the file defined by the
active FSPOOL. This is true even
if there are queues with the same
DESTIFORM on another FSPOOL.
In this way, a unique CICS printer
task is able to manage queues cre-
ated on different spool files under
the same CICS (e.g., for production
or test processing). The implemen-
tation of this new feature requires
AUX Temp Storage.
5. DEFINE PRINTER Statement
This statement may be used to con-
trol the allocation of a report to a
logical printer. The OUTPUT oper-
and is taken as a logical PRINTER
PROFILE name. The logical printer
profile name must be pre-defined
to SYSPOOL, but need not be equal
to the current PRINTER PROFILE
in use. Remember: A user profile is
comprised of a set of logical printer
profiles. A NATURAL program may
contain as many DEFINE PRINTER
statements as logical printers in
the active user profile.
6. New Printer Status
The printer status FREE and BUSY
are well-known to NAF users. To
assist in detecting physical printer
problems, the following additional
status TYPES have been defined:
HELD, HUNG, WAIT.
HELD: The printer had been issued
a "HALT" from SYSPOOL.
HUNG: A START request for a
printer task was issued, but
failed.
WAIT: A START request was suc-
cessfully executed, but after
logon to SYSPRINT an error was
detected that the printer is no
longer available (invalid terminal
ID) or terminal status (TCTTETS)
of the printer was greater than
15.
BUSY: The printer has been locked
by operator command (SET
BUSY) or a START request for a
printer task has been issued by
operator command (START
PRINTING) or by the NATSPOOL
nucleus. This status is also set
when CICS is no longer polling
the device (out-of-service).
OUTS: This status is assigned if
the printer is designated by CICS
as out-of-service (i.e., if the
printer is not polled by CICS).
It should be noted that each status
above is defined to NATSPOOL. In
other words, NATSPOOL may show
a printer as FREE after FREEing it
while CICS has it as out-of-service.
To assist in detecting logical prob-
lems in user programs, the follow-
ing additional queue status has
been defined: NOT CLOSED. This
status is assigned if NATURAL
is not at ET status when closing
printout queues. The most probable
reason for this to happen is an
UPDATE statement not followed by
an ET.
Queues with status of NOT
CLOSED are not printed, but
backed out from the SPOOL file at
NATURAL session end. This back-
out may be overridden by placing
a non-blank character in the "REC"
field of the EDIT Printout Queues
screen. This will force status "TO
BE PRINTED." It should also be
noted that NOT CLOSED queues
will be backed out if the clear key
is used. These queues may be re-
covered by entering a non-blank
character in the RE0 field of the
queue status menu.
Z User Exit for NATRJE
A user exit capability for
NATURAL Remote Job Entry has
been developed to allow processing
each Job Control statement before
being passed to the internal reader
(POWER/JES). The following data
is availale to the exit:
e The JCL card to be submitted
e A return code field
Name of NATURAL program
being executed
The CICS operator identification
Work area
This exit is only supported for
VSElSP2, MVSISP, and MVSIXA.
VS1 is not supported.