Introduction › Forecasting › Forecast Facility

Forecast Facility

The forecast facility projects the scheduled workload for a given time. The projected workload can be as specific as a single job or as general as the workload for a CPU or application system. Successor jobs triggered by predecessor jobs, or any jobs triggered by data sets created in the predecessor jobs, can also be included.

Further, forecast displays the projected workload for successive short time intervals throughout the forecast time period. This representation can be used to detect bottlenecks in the system. Workload can be rearranged as needed and resources scheduled properly.

Forecast also reports jobs involved with tapes, JCL overrides, or both ahead of their actual submission time in two ways:

• By preparing a pull list for the tapes. The pull list indicates the volume serial number of the input tapes, and the approximate number of scratch tapes for the output data sets.
• By determining which jobs need JCL overrides. The Forecast report indicates jobs that need JCL overrides. The override JCL can be stored in a special JCL override library and retrieved automatically. This process satisfies the JCL override requirement without any further intervention required. JCL overrides and the JCL override library are not applicable to cross-platform jobs.

Also, forecast can be used for the following:

• To show an entire job network, and the ending time of each job in the structure of the network, based on an arbitrary starting time.
• To produce a hardcopy report of scheduled tasks in worksheet format. The report can serve as a manual checklist for recording task completion.
• To verify newly defined schedules. Forecast can be run for a single job or an entire application system. Forecasts help ensure that defined schedules cause processing cycles to occur when required.