The amount of total memory in use on the system is of concern to a system administrator who wants to restrict a particular task from consuming more than a certain amount of resources. The TOTALMEMORYLIMIT task attribute enables a system administrator to specify a consumption limit for the save, overlay, and overlaid memory.

You can prevent a task from exceeding a planned level of total memory usage by assigning a value to the TOTALMEMORYLIMIT task attribute. If the total memory usage of a task exceeds the assigned value, the system discontinues the task and displays the error message, “TOTAL MEMORY LIMIT EXCEEDED.”

If a process is discontinued with the TOTAL MEMORY LIMIT EXCEEDED error, check to see if the task was running normally or if the task was looping. If the task was running normally, you should consider program design measures to reduce the save memory usage. Alternatively, you can raise the TOTALMEMORYLIMIT value and plan to run the task at a time when there is less of a demand on the system memory by the mix environment.

You might also find that the system administrator has assigned a TOTALMEMLIMIT value to a job queue you use for your WFL jobs. If the TOTALMEMLIMIT is assigned as a job queue default, you can override it with a different TOTALMEMORYLIMIT task attribute assignment in your WFL job. If the TOTALMEMLIMIT is assigned as a job queue limit, your WFL job is rejected from the job queue if the job header includes a higher TOTALMEMORYLIMIT task attribute assignment. For more information about job queues, refer to the discussion WFL in Tasking from Programming Languages.