Passing value to Cobol program through Parm using data in sequential file - cobol

Question

I am setting up a JCL which will pass value of date coming from a sequential file (has one record) (example 20190320) to parm as shown below:
//STEP1 EXEC PGM=ABC,PARM='20190320'
I am trying to pass value of PARM with value of date containing inside sequential file.

Answer 1

Assuming that your COBOL program already contain instructions to retrieve the information passed from JCL using PARM, you may use the PARMDD parameter in conjunction with a DD statement to achieve the task. The DD statement is to define the sequential file with PARM data.
//STEP1 EXEC PGM=ABC,PARMDD=MYINPUT
//MYINPUT DD DISP=SHR,DSN=MY.PARM.INPUT
//SYSOUT DD SYSOUT=*
Dataset MY.PARM.INPUT can have the value of date.
Basically, you can't pass more than 100 bytes of data using PARM parameter. PARMDD is usually preferred if you want to pass data > 100 bytes.
Hope this helps.

Answer 2

You can not do this in the one job.
Options include
Changing the program ABC to read from the file
Writing a program/rexx to read the file and call the program ABC
Read the file and Generate a new job that calls ABC with the date you have just read. This could be done in a rexx script.
Some scheduling systems might support this.
Please provide a bit more information
What scheduling system does your company use
Is the program ABC a locally written program ??? that can be changed
Is the job part of a batch stream run automatically or submitted by a user.
Manual Submission
If the job is being submitted manually you could
Write a Rexx Script using ISPF file tailoring to generate && submit the JCL
Rexx Macro to update and submit the JCL
ISPF Edit macro
you could have
// set DATE=$Date$
//STEP1 EXEC PGM=ABC,PARM='&date'
in the jour JCL
and have the rexx edit macro
read the file
do a replace all on &date
I would use the same variables as Controlm
With JCL
// set DATE=$Date$
//STEP1 EXEC PGM=ABC,PARM='&date'
the edit macro would some thing like
/* rexx */
ADDRESS ISREDIT 'macro'
Address TSO "EXECIO 1 DISKR indd"
pull date
ADDRESS ISREDIT "r $date$" date
ADDRESS ISREDIT "cancel"
The edit macro needs to be in the SYSPROC or SYSEXEC libraries. If the
Macro is called ChgDate you would just