ASC Improves IBM i Chops of Cross-Platform Job Scheduler

March 18, 2014 Alex Woodie

Advanced Systems Concepts (ASC) has recently enhanced its ActiveBatch job scheduler with more useful integration and management functionality for the IBM i server.

ASC last month announced the release of ActiveBatch version 9 SP3, which focuses on improving the product’s capability to work in IBM i environments and with Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) systems management tool.

On the IBM i front, ASC says the enhancements focus on improving the ActiveBatch execution agent’s integration with IBM‘s native IBM i job scheduler. “The execution agent leverages the existing AS/400 scheduler,” ASC says in its announcement, “but adds all of ActiveBatch’s automation and management capabilities, including its advanced date/time scheduling and event automation framework, job audit and revision control, and much more.”

In other words, if you adopt ASC’s ActiveBatch product, you can continue to use the IBM i job scheduler that comes with the OS. But you can also take advantage of the cross-platform capabilities that ActiveBatch offers, including scheduling jobs to execute based on IT events such as an email, file or Web service triggers, or to trigger completions based on job success, failure or abort.

“Moreover,” the company says, “AS/400 jobs can now be monitored, and log files viewed, from within the ActiveBatch console. The platform’s alert architecture can also be leveraged to alert users when an issue arises.” (We can forgive the Morristown, New Jersey, company for calling the IBM i platform by its older names, iSeries and AS/400, but hope that they will soon discover the error of its ways.)

ActiveBatch is an enterprise job scheduler that helps organizations manage workloads running across IBM i, Windows, Linux, Unix, mainframe, OpenVMS, and Mac OS environments. The software supports time-based and trigger-based scheduling, and features an array of templates designed to simplify the integration of databases, scripts, and processes (such as managed file transfers, Web services, .NET assemblies, and Java) into an end-to-end workflow. The company (which is not to be confused with the Advanced Systems Concepts division of HelpSystems) added support for i5/OS V5R4 and IBM i 6.1 back in 2009.

For more information see its website at www.advsyscon.com.