IBM Mainframe Forum

NicC wrote:... it is better on the jobcard rather than being hidden away on a step.

I agree with NicC and Mr. Scherrer that the TIME parameter probably should not be used here, but if it must be used, its placement is important. TIME=1440 should not be used except in extremely unusual situations

Most sites define a default time for a step in the JES definition for the job class. I do not know of any IBM defined method to define a default time for a job. In most shops this step default is rather low, say, for the purpose of this discussion it is 1 minute.

Now let's say your job is coded like this -

//AJOB JOB ...,TIME=10
//STEP1 EXEC PGM=xxx

The step will run for 1 minute, because the step default is 1 minute, even though the JOB limit is 10 minutes.

Now let's say we have -

//AJOB JOB ...,TIME=10
//STEP1 EXEC PGM=xxx,TIME=10 (and runs for 9 minutes, 59 seconds)
//STEP2 EXEC PGM=xxx,TIME=10

STEP2 will run for 1 second, because STEP1 used 9 minutes and 59 seconds of the job limit.

This is discussed in more detail in "MVS JCL Reference" for your z/OS release.