Trigger a mainframe job from Windows machine

Question

I am converting my Windows script script that uses FTP to SFTP. To trigger the mainframe job we had below command:

    quote site filetype=jes  
    put C:\Test\test.dat
    bye
    sftp.exe uname@servername

But site filetype=jes does not work in SFTP. What will be the equivalent command for SFTP to trigger the mainframe job by sending a trigger file?

Answer 1

There are several options:

1. You can use a different FTP server (such as the Co:Z product mentioned in an earlier response.
2. You can wrap a conventional FTP session in a secure network session (VPN, SSH, etc) in a way that keeps the connection secure, but doesn't require SFTP. This gives you the security of SFTP while letting you continue to use your existing FTP scripting unchanged.
3. You can swap FTP for more of a shell approach (SSH) to login to the mainframe and submit your JCL. Once you have any sort of shell session, there are many ways to submit JCL - see http://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSLTBW_1.13.0/com.ibm.zos.r13.bpxa500/submit.htm%23submit for an example.
4. A slight variant on #3 (above) is that you can have a "submit JCL" transaction in something like a web server, if you're running one on z/OS. This gives you a way to submit JCL using an HTTP request, say through CURL or WGET (if you go this way, be sure someone carefully reviews the security around this transaction...you probably don't want it open to the outside world!).
5. If this is something you do over and over, and if your site uses job scheduling software (CA-7, Control-M, OPC, Zeke, etc...most sites have one of these), almost all these products can monitor for file activity and launch batch jobs when a file is created. You'd simply create a file with SFTP "PUT", and the job scheduling software would do its thing.

Good luck!