Lesson 2 Session and Jobs — What Are They?

Lesson 2 presents sessions and jobs.

Once you are logged on, you can work with your HP 3000 computer in two ways:

in a session
by submitting a job

Sessions

Logging on is the way you that begin any interaction with your MPE/iX system. A session begins the moment you that log on (HELLO) and ends when you log off (BYE).

MPE/iX is an interactive system. This means that what you enter is acted upon immediately by the computer.

In a session, this is what happens:

You enter instructions to the computer at the keyboard, one command at a time.
As you type it, your command appears on the screen. When you press Return, the computer attempts to carry out the command.
The computer gives some response on the screen to each command that you try. It is a two-way conversation between you and the computer.

Working in a session is sometimes called interactive processing.

Jobs

When you work in a session, you see the results of your instructions as they execute.

You use a job when you want the computer to carry out several instrutions on its own, perhaps after you leave for home.

You do not have to be logged on when the job starts, or when it ends. The job prints out a report for you, telling you what it did and whether it succeeded in doing what you wanted it to do.

Advantages of using a job

You can process all of the commands in a job file at any time with a single command. Your terminal is available to do other work while the job is processed.
You can schedule a job to begin at 3:00 A.M. You could schedule a job to begin next year, on a particular day, at a particular time. Starting a job on its way to execution is called submitting a job. You may hear the term streaming, because the command used to launch a job is STREAM.
A job that is properly created and started will stop itself at the end. At the end, the computer prepares a summary of the job in a job listing and prints the summary on the computer's printer.

Disadvantages of using a job

If an error occurs while a job is running, the job may stop running. Then you have to study your job listing in order to discover what went wrong.

Running a job is often called batch processing. You will hear it called a batch job, too.

Lesson 2 Exercises

What are the two ways of "working" with the HP 3000 computer?
In the space provided, indicate with an "S" for Session or a "J" for Job which of the following statements best describes each.
1. This is also known as interactive processing.
2. This type of computer command processing allows you to execute several commands without your interaction.
3. In this kind of processing, commands are sent to the computer one at a time from a terminal keyboard.
4. This is also known as aP batch session.

Lesson 2 Session and Jobs — What Are They?

Technical documentation

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Sessions

Jobs

Advantages of using a job

Disadvantages of using a job

Lesson 2 Exercises