How to generate/run a Gen .NET application in batch
Article ID: 236997
Updated On:
Products
Issue/Introduction
Needing to generate batch jobs targeting .NET/C# using Gen., but not finding anything in the Gen documentation about how to do that. In fact there is very little about using Gen for batch that I can find. It's all geared towards distributed online client/server type processing.
Is it possible to generate C# code from Gen which runs in the .NET framework but not under Component Services (so not server code)? If so, how is that done?
If not, is there a way to mimic batch jobs / runs in .NET using code generated from Gen ?
Environment
Release : 8.6
Component : Gen Generator/Run Time for .NET
Resolution
The lack of .NET/C# for batch mainly relates to the historical development of Gen/IEF and original IEF block mode applications for which COBOL and C were the languages.
BATCH was created purely for COBOL/Mainframe JES.
For distributed platforms using C the "online no display" property for a PStep effectively enabled the same type of background execution (can be used with Unix/Linux cron or Windows Task Scheduler etc)
When support for Java and C#/.NET was introduced later, they were envisaged as client/server applications and the requirement for "batch" was probably never considered and since then there has probably never been enough user demand/idea creation for a "batch" option.
There are ways to workaround the limitation using any type of Gen proxy to call the Gen C#/.NET server (e.g. .NET Proxy if wanting to write a C# program to call the Gen server).
A proxy can also be run in an asynchronous mode (Synchronous vs. Asynchronous Processing) to provide an unattended execution mechanism i.e. batch.
Additional Information
Community threads:
Batch processing in .NET using Gen
Mainframe Re-Platform
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