Your job.properties serves future launches and very hand when any of your cluster parameters changes due to upgrades or other issues. It is not meant for launching only but can be used for testing as well if you configure your files appropriately.  ... View more

It is good practice to keep the job.properties file in the local and also to parametice as many variables in your hdfs files as possible within the job.properties file so that when you need to edit changes on your hdfs files there is no need to "tamper" with hdfs files you just edit in your job.properties and restart the Oozie workflow. The tradition of keeping the job.properties in HDFS usually will bite you when you need to restart your jobs. Restarting an unedited job.properties means the Oozie workflow begins from the previous day you set it up and that could be months or years past. ... View more