ABAP Community Forum

Background job cannot read the file from the previous job — production only

Questions · Updated 2026-10-22

Hi everyone, I’m looking for advice on an intermittent problem with two ABAP background jobs that run in sequence: • Job A generates a file on the application server. • Job B is scheduled to start after Job A finishes and should read and process that file. • Most runs work, but occasionally Job B cannot open or read the file even though Job A shows as finished. So far this only happens in production. We have tried the same job sequence in QA but have not been able to reproduce it. I don’t yet have enough evidence to tell whether the file is missing, inaccessible, incomplete, or being resolved differently when the second job runs. What would you check first, and what information would you capture during the next failure? In particular: 1. How would you verify whether both jobs run on the same application server and resolve the same physical file path? Could a local versus shared directory explain a production-only issue? 2. Is “previous job finished” sufficient here, or should we explicitly verify that the file is closed and ready before processing it? 3. Which job logs, OPEN DATASET return codes/messages, server details, permissions, or timestamps would help distinguish timing problems from access or path issues? I’d appreciate suggestions for a practical diagnostic approach, especially from anyone who has seen this under production load. I don’t want to add an arbitrary delay without understanding the cause. Thanks!