Using OS/400 Prestart Jobs for Repetitious Server Processing

...Like autostart jobs, a prestart job is a batch job that is usually configured to start running when a subsystem begins. But unlike autostart jobs, prestart jobs can easily be started and stopped on demand without bringing the entire subsystem down.

Prestart jobs can also be configured to spawn additional copies of themselves to handle increased demand, and each individual prestart job can be timed to expire and spawn a successor copy after a set number of uses.

OS/400 traditionally uses prestart jobs to handle communication functions, such as when large numbers of ODBC and JDBC users access data through the QZDASOINIT jobs in the QUSRWRK subsystem, but they can also be used to handle persistent single-threaded server jobs that continually process data throughout the day.