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Started Tasks

Every job requires a JOB statement to identify the job, except for a special kind of job called an operator started task. These are special jobs that are started from an operator console. Their JCL is stored in SYS1.PROCLIB or one of its concatenations.

Started tasks normally consist of a single job step. Until recently, started tasks were exempt from many of the restrictions placed on regular jobs. When using the Search JCL Libraries (4.3) facility to search for the execution of certain programs, do not forget that the EXEC statement does not always name a program. It can name a JCL procedure, which is one or more JCL statements retrieved from one of the proclibs. Procedure references should be checked carefully because it is possible to use symbolic variables in JCL to obscure what is actually going on. For example, instead of putting EXEC PGM=AMASPZAP in the JCL, a programmer could put EXEC PGM=X in JCL that is stored as a procedure reference. The procedure could then be called, passing superzap as a parameter.