MVS TOOLS AND TRICKS OF THE TRADE OCTOBER 2005 Sam Golob MVS Systems Programmer P.O. Box 906 Tallman, New York 10982 Sam Golob is a Senior Systems Programmer. He also participates in library tours and book signings with his wife, author Courtney Taylor. Sam can be contacted at sbgolob@cbttape.org. Information about the CBT MVS Tapes can be found on the web, at http://www.cbttape.org. THE 30TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE CBT TAPE We would never have thought that MVS has been here so long, had we not noticed that so many of our colleagues are retiring. After all, isn't computing a "new" thing, only for "young" people? Of course, when it comes to PERSONAL computing, that kind of computing is relatively new, having come out for the first time in the late 70s and early 80s. But computing on the big machines that are owned by huge companies, is a good 20 years older, and it is very easy to forget how long mainframe computing has really been around. Today, we'll talk about one of the MVS Systems Programmer mainstays which has already been here for 30 years. (Would you believe it?) This is Arnold Casinghino's CBT (Connecticut Bank and Trust Company) MVS Utilities Tape. Arnie used to work for the (now defunct, original) Connecticut Bank and Trust Company in Hartford, Connecticut. (There is now a new startup bank by the same name, not to be confused with the old one.) And that's what "CBT" used to stand for. (Now it stands for nothing special. I once thought of calling it "Casinghino's Big Tape".) Arnie told me that the CBT Tape got started around 1975 in their Hartford area user group, which consisted of 13 companies. The companies used to share their usermods for each new release of the MVS system that came out, so eventually, Arnie and they decided that it would be easier to put all the stuff on one tape and circulate it around. Once the tape was made, Arnie posted its contents on a bulletin board at the next SHARE conference, and the rest is history. The tape grew and grew. It is still growing. After I took over the proprietorship of the tape in 1990, Arnie revealed to me that the Connecticut Bank and Trust Company did not let him advertise for contributions. If somebody contributed, that was fine. But Arnie wasn't allowed to go out and solicit new items. The fact that when I took over the tape, there were already 472 files there, testifies to the unbelievable way in which the CBT Tape grew to service the MVS community. It really caught on. And today, 148+ versions later (the current version number is 469), the CBT Tape is over two and a half times as big, with the CBT Overflow Tape being almost the same size. We are all very happy that the MVS world is continuing to contribute to and benefit from this facility. At the end of 1998, Sam Knutson proposed to create a web site as a new home for the CBT Tape materials, which had been distributed on real tape by NaSPA ever since the Connecticut Bank and Trust Company folded and I became the editor. The new medium proved to be the wave of the future, as contributions began pouring in over the Internet from all parts of the world. Since previously, contributors had to mail a tape or cartridge in to either Arnie or me, international contributions had been limited. But once the Internet communication of "CBT Tape business" began in earnest, it was just as easy for someone in Italy or Indonesia to send in a contribution as for someone in the U.S. So the international representation of contributors on the tape today, is very extensive. Sam Knutson and I currently divide the CBT Tape maintenance work between us. Sam Knutson is the webmaster and keeper of the CBT Tape web site, so all questions concerning the web site should go to Sam K. I'm in charge of managing the contributions and editing the actual tape files and materials. So questions concerning the tape contents and file materials should go to me. At the CBT Tape site home page, you can find buttons to click, to send an email to either of us. It's either sknutson@cbttape.org for Sam K, or sbgolob@cbttape.org for me. "TAPE" ORGANIZATION Believe it or not, with all the other media around, the CBT Tape collection is still representable as a physical tape, or actually two tapes. The regular CBT Tape has over 720 file slots, almost all full. The "CBT Overflow Tape" has close to 300 full file slots. The "Regular CBT Tape" has just exceeded the capacity of a 3480 IDRC cartridge, and if you'd want to fit it onto a single tape now, you'd have to use a 3490E. The Overflow Tape still fits onto a 3480 IDRC cartridge, but barely. There is a program on CBT Tape File 229 called COPYNLNL, that can split a CBT tape into two separate tapes by copying some of the NL files onto one output tape, and the rest of them onto another tape. Alternatively, you can obtain an AWS-format tape image of the entire CBT Tape at the CBT Tape web site, or you can obtain it from Sam Knutson on cd-rom, and use the VTT2TAPE program from CBT File 533, to make a real tape out of it, if your site has a tape drive. Actually, most people download single CBT Tape files from the CBT Tape web site, and that's how they get the goodies. If you do a www.google.com search for "CBT Tape", you'll find the CBT Tape web site very easily. All materials there are free, and you don't have to be a member of any organization to obtain them. It's a wonderful service for MVS practitioners everywhere, and entirely volunteer. It is sort of (but not exactly) like "Open Source", but it is much older. CBT Tape and CBT Overflow Tape file updates, that are developed in between the cuts of a full new version of the tape(s), are posted to the "Updates" Page of the CBT Tape web site. I feel it is very important to know about the Updates Page, because that's where the current action is, and that's what I deal with, almost every day. Let me explain. When you go to the CBT Tape web site, there are quite a few categories (on the left side of the home page) that you can click on. One of them is called CBT, and it contains individual files from the latest "official" version of the entire (Regular CBT) Tape. Another one is called Overflow, and there you can get the latest "official" version of the CBT Overflow Tape files. But we cut new CBT Tape versions only once every several months nowadays, and the Overflow Tape versions are cut even less often. So all the new and updated stuff goes onto the Updates page, and my recommendation is to look at the Updates page often. Since I'm in charge of the Updates page contents, I can tell you that usually the stuff there is quite reliable. I try not to post any stuff there which is not already going to go onto the regular tape. Sam Knutson's explanation at the top of the Updates page is pretty realistic. Most of the files there are ready to use, or I won't post them. However, the authors and I sometimes have a back and forth conversation for a while, and I keep posting new (and more "fixed") versions of their work on the Updates page, until they are satisfied. Generally, I try to wait until all pending contributions are somewhat stable, before cutting a new version of an entire tape. But the cutoff point can be arbitrary (like a few weeks before SHARE), and so it often happens that a better version of a package, with more bugs fixed, can be found on the Updates page, than on the CBT page. On the current CBT Tape files that I post nowadays, there is usually a member called $$$#DATE, which can be regarded as a "version number tag". Every time I post a new version of the software on Updates, (and these get carried to the "official" CBT Tape cuts too), I create a new version of this member, which contains a time and date stamp, and the total number of (usually 80-byte) records in the file. So if there is a question as to which version of a program you are running, and you still have the "install file", you can go to this member and find out exactly when you got your code. For your information, in case you want to know about the tools I use in creating the CBT Tape files, you can find them on CBT Tape File 006. The GENDAT CLIST used to create the $$$#DATE member is there, as are the DOCFILE and DOCFILX members which fix the @FILEnnn members of each CBT Tape file. The CBTUPD program, which breaks CBT Tape File 001 (the doc file) into a pds, is there too. I maintain File 001 as a pds (with currently over 1200 members), and you can create that same pds for yourself, using the CBTUPD program. It could make it a lot easier for you to look up the documentation about a particular CBT Tape file. File 006 is very interesting, and you might learn something useful by taking a look at it. RECENT CBT TAPE ACTIVITY The phrase "too numerous to mention" is quite accurate in describing recent CBT Tape activity. The most recently cut CBT Tape (Version 469) had 50 file updates, which is an all-time record for the number of updates in a single CBT Tape version. Some of the new contributions are entirely different from any previous contributions, such as the JumpList programmer's workbench from Joseph Caughman, which is on File 717. File 719 contains a completely novel DASD dump/restore program from Greg Smith. Files 721 and 722 contain the ChangeWiz and FileWiz packages from Shirley Huhtanen, which are very sophisticated "library member change" and "file compare" packages. Bill Sweeney, an "old MVS hand", has contributed a big collection of his utilities on File 720. Garry Green has contributed File 718, which provides TSO LOGON exits that allow you to LOGON to any subsystem. On the Updates page, for a sampling, Harvey Wachtel has updated the SETPW2 command from the RACF SHARE tape, to allow an administrator to permanently change any RACF user's password when necessary. This is on File 007 (not James Bond-esque at all - quite routine). Greg Price has come up with a new Version 39.3 of REVIEW (CBT File 134) (the famous MVS file browser) again, and this version sports the capability of ISPF-like editing that has been much improved. The editing is triggered from a REVIEW screen by entering UPDATE on the command line, or from a member directory by entering "U" next to a member name. You don't need ISPF to be up, to use either the browsing or editing capabilities of REVIEW, but if ISPF is up, REVIEW will take extra advantage of it. I have contributed some updates to File 533, which contains programs to convert AWS-format and FLEX-ES (R) FAKETAPE-format virtual tapes to real tapes, and vice-versa. EFFECTS OF THE CBT TAPE ON MVS It can safely be said, that the CBT Tape has been a major force in triggering enhancement suggestions, improvement suggestions, and "MVS Requirements" to IBM. If somebody developed a tool, or a mod, which could be incorporated into the MVS Operating System, but which was not yet there, though people were already using it, it was just a matter of time before there was a clamor for IBM to pick up the enhancement. And many of the SHARE and GUIDE requirements were the direct result of the fact that there already existed a tool or a mod on the CBT Tape to do the job. I can't begin to list the enormous number of features of MVS, now taken for granted, that started from CBT Tape contributions. I'll just give one example. This is the "partial pds member list" in ISPF. ISPF used to only list ALL the members of a pds in an EDIT or BROWSE screen, and it was impossible to isolate and display only SOME of the members. Steve Smith, in the PDS Command package on File 182 of the CBT Tape, not only invented partial member lists, but he also invented the massive multi-function ISPF member list, where you could BROWSE or EDIT or do twenty-odd other functions from the same member list, without having to get out of it. Other ISPF-based packages, such as ISOGON's SPIFFY, picked up on this idea, and eventually it became a part of ISPF itself. This is only one of hundreds, or even thousands, of examples where components of MVS have gotten improved from the CBT Tape based contributions and tools. AFTERWORDS The CBT Tape, started by Arnold Casinghino, has already been around, and helping MVS'ers, for just about 30 years now. It's amazing how time flies when you're having fun! Having grown from the Hartford Area MVS Users Group, through SHARE, to a worldwide supported institution, the CBT Tape collection of software, utilities, mods, and assorted goodies supplies MVS shops throughout the world with much extra equipment and advice, to make our job easier through sharing. It cannot be forgotten that for nearly 10 years, NaSPA was the principal means for distributing the CBT Tape materials, and I want to express our heartfelt thanks to Scott Sherer and the entire NaSPA crew, for their enormous role in continuing the chain of MVS support through the CBT Tape. Between the time just before I took over the tape, in 1989, and continuing until the time when we started the web site, at the beginning of 1999, everybody got the CBT Tape materials principally through NaSPA. Marty Kuntz at Deluxe Check Printers was contracted to duplicate the tapes, and most of the original tape distributions for a long time, were done in this way. Thanks, Scott! This is well deserved and long overdue. So I am very grateful to also have been a part of MVS history, through helping to disseminate of the work of thousands of us MVS practitioners throughout the world. For 30 years now, the products of the CBT Tape collection have brightened our environment and aided us with many of the details in doing our everyday work. I wish all of you the very best of everything, and I hope to see you here again next month.