As an IS auditor it is very important to understand the importance of job scheduling. Which of the following statement is NOT true about job scheduler or job scheduling software?

A. Job information is set up only once, which increase the probability of an error.

B. Records are maintained of all job success and failures.

C. Reliance on operator is reduced.

D. Job dependencies are defined so that if a job fails, subsequent jobs relying on its output will not be processed.

The NOT keyword is used in this question. You need to find out an option which is not true about job scheduling.

Below are some advantages of job scheduling or using job scheduling software.

Job information is set up only once, reduce the probability of an error.

Records are maintained of all job success and failures.

Reliance on operator is reduced.

Job dependencies are defined so that if a job fails, subsequent jobs relying on its output will not be processed.

For your exam you should know the information below:

A job scheduler is a computer application for controlling unattended background program execution (commonly called batch processing).

Synonyms are batch system, Distributed Resource Management System (DRMS), and Distributed Resource Manager (DRM). Todays job schedulers, often termed workload automation, typically provide a graphical user interface and a single point of control for definition and monitoring of background executions in a distributed network of computers. Increasingly, job schedulers are required to orchestrate the integration of real-time business activities with traditional background IT processing across different operating system platforms and business application environments.

Job scheduling should not be confused with process scheduling, which is the assignment of currently running processes to CPUs by the operating system.

Basic features expected of job scheduler software include:

interfaces which help to define workflows and/or job dependencies

automatic submission of executions

interfaces to monitor the executions

priorities and/or queues to control the execution order of unrelated jobs

If software from a completely different area includes all or some of those features, this software is consider to have job scheduling capabilities.

Most operating systems (such as Unix and Windows) provide basic job scheduling capabilities, for example: croon. Web hosting services provide job scheduling capabilities through a control panel or a webcron solution. Many programs such as DBMS, backup, ERPs, and BPM also include relevant job-scheduling capabilities. Operating system (-OS-) or point program supplied job-scheduling will not usually provide the ability to schedule beyond a single OS instance or outside the remit of the specific program. Organizations needing to automate unrelated IT workload may also leverage further advanced features from a job scheduler, such as:

real-time scheduling based on external, unpredictable events

automatic restart and recovery in event of failures

alerting and notification to operations personnel

generation of incident reports

audit trails for regulatory compliance purposes

The following answers are incorrect:

The other options are correctly defined about job scheduling

The following reference(s) were/was used to create this question:

CISA review manual 2014 page number 242

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_scheduler