MVS TOOLS AND TRICKS OF THE TRADE JANUARY 2006 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. WORKING WITH WHAT YOU HAVE, AND ENJOYING IT Here's something I've been thinking about. The "older people" nowadays, in the years 200x, talk often about the 60's and 70's, and how it was then. Back in those days, in the 50's, 60's and 70's, the "older people then" used to talk about the 20's all the time (and the Great Depression in the 30's, and the First and Second Wars). So we might easily picture that the "older people" in the 20's used to talk about the 1880's and 1890's. And in the 1880's and 1890's there weren't even any automobiles or trucks. Everybody used horses. Really! There were trains then, but no cars! And somehow, everybody still managed to live their lives "normally". So we have to be aware about how much everything has changed, and how quickly it is still changing. Even the younger people among us can see this. Ten or fifteen years ago, there were hardly any cell phones. I visited Chicago once, at that time, and I was impressed about how you couldn't find a phone booth there, as compared to New York. Now, unless your cell phone doesn't work (or you forgot it, perish the thought), it's a moot point. And the Internet is even newer! Computers themselves are getting faster every year, with mind-boggling jumps in storage capacity and speed that we're easily getting used to, as they occur. And to tell you the truth, the Mainframe world (established as it is), is no different. We are "techies". We are supposed to be in the middle of all this change. We aren't just reacting to it. We're CAUSING it too! And that's what I want to talk about today. Our lives are a mixture of both REACTING to all the changes, and PARTICIPATING in them also. If you think about it, it's a very exciting time to live in. And by considering these thoughts and bringing them more forward in our minds, we can become more effective participants, as well as enjoying our work better. Let's consider one more aspect of our jobs. It's the fact that we can APPRECIATE our job AT THE TIME WE ARE DOING IT. This is a privilege. Not all jobs are like that. There are many jobs which let us ENJOY our surroundings, and there are some jobs which don't. I'll show you. I once read a "tale of woe" written by an expert "long snapper" specialist in the National Football League. His job, being performed in a big stadium with 80000 people watching, required 100 percent concentration with ABSOLUTELY no room for any other thoughts. Every move of his hands was thought out, to the millimeter! As a consequence, at the time he was doing his job, this man was not privileged to be able to think about where he was. At the very end of his (otherwise very distinguished) career, he was hired to be the long snapper for a contending team, for the final 3 games. In the last game, he got overwhelmed by the magnificence of the great crowd, enjoyed himself for a second, muffed the snap, and cost his entire team, which had worked hard all year, a trip to the playoffs. It was all because he took some time to enjoy his job, in a job that didn't allow it. So we have to be very grateful for our own positions, which do allow it. One of the ways that we can enjoy our own jobs, is to be able to PARTICIPATE in the "change process" aspect of it. Another way, is to have fun using the new tools and gimmicks that other people have developed. Even though we might get caught up in the "drudgery" of doing our daily tasks, we should wake ourselves up once in a while, (using some kind of internal STIMER macro to remind us) and see how much of this job we can really enjoy. ENJOYING THE NEWS GROUPS IBM-Main is one of the nicest ways of keeping up with this field. I'll admit that the IBM-Main newsgroup is highly dependent on the types of questions which the people will write in, and therefore, the subject matter will jump around a lot. But since the IBM-Main group is monitored by a lot of experts, from within IBM itself and outside IBM, the replies there are often very authoritative, and you can learn a lot by reading the IBM-Main digests. If you want to join IBM-Main, it is a listserv-based news group, and you can subscribe at the listserv address of listserv@bama.ua.edu. Once you've already subscribed, the posting address in ibm-main@bama.ua.edu. I once wrote an entire article in this column about IBM-Main, which you can find on File 120 of the CBT Tape, as member CL9804AP (April 1998). You can also find that column in the NaSPA archives, but I've since updated the subscription information in the copy on CBT File 120, because it has changed since then. If I have time, I like to read through the IBM-Main digests and see the kinds of MVS questions which people are concerned with. It's like reading a newspaper that has to do with MVS. You can pick and choose the threads you like, or you can simply sit down and read through the whole thing. If IBM-Main is too long for you, or it's not in your exact special area, you can find many other news groups (based on listserv or elsewhere, such as on yahoogroups.com). To avoid cluttering my email inbox, I get digests for all the groups I subscribe to. One hint about finding newsgroups: If a group is listserv-based, you can find all of them from any one of them. And yahoogroups has a searchable index, so you can find anything over there, that you might be interested in. By the way, I've just started a news group of my own. It is called cbt-tape@yahoogroups.com. Its purpose is to discuss the contents of the CBT Tape collection, to report recent Updates to the collection, and to report bugs and code changes to anything in the collection. The entire CBT Tape collection is free to anyone, and you don't have to be a "member of anything" or know a password, to use it. Just do a search on www.google.com for "CBT Tape" and you should get there easily. A PROGRESSION Over the years, I have found that my work as an MVS systems programmer follows a pattern. I get used to working with certain tools and equipment. Then I add to them, as I discover more. Then the technology improves, or I add to the technology by writing more tools myself. Then my techniques change and adapt, often to the extent that I wonder how I ever was able to do my job before. It's almost like wondering how people were able to live when there were just horses, and no cars. For example, since I use the PDS 8.6 command package from CBT Tape File 182 (or its vendor equivalent Startool FDM from Serena) so often, I wonder what life would be like without it. If (just to choose one situation for illustrative purposes) I might want to find all the members of a partitioned dataset that were updated in the last two weeks, I could do either of the following: Without the PDS package, I'd get an EDIT member list and do a "sort changed" command, or click on the date field header. With the PDS package, I'd get a partial member list using the subcommand: MEMLIST : LAST(14) , or use the abbreviation: ML : BIWeek . Because the PDS command offers many more options with its member list than just doing an EDIT or BROWSE, I prefer the PDS way of doing things. But native ISPF has improved over the years too, and without the PDS command package, it's not quite the same as going back to a horse and wagon again. The techniques using native ISPF are pretty good, too. With non-IBM parts of our work, the situation has changed dramatically too. I don't know what I'd do without Windows cut and paste on the terminal emulator screen. If I'm logged onto two completely different machines from the same pc, I can transfer screens full of data using cut and paste. Examples like this are innumerable. Our life is far different than it was, even 10 years ago. MORE SPECIFICS Lately, I've been using some neat gimmicks like the tools from Bob Glover (of Jacksonville). One tool, which requires a little bit of setup (i.e. adding ADRDSSU to the IKJTSOxx AUTHPGM list) is an ADRDSSU based dataset copy and move tool, that runs in the foreground. The tool is from CBT File 630 and it is called MC. You enter TSO MC and get a panel, asking which dataset(s) to move (in DFDSS control card format). Then the panel sets up a DFDSS copy or move job which runs under your TSO session, instead of in batch. If your computer is fast enough (and most of them are, nowadays) the jobs run pretty quickly, and you can jockey your datasets around from pack to pack without much fuss. It makes my own DASD management, in a small shop, very clean and quick. You might try and have a look at Bob's other files (numbers 608, 624, 626, 631 and 682) where he has contributed some other useful gimmicks. In the same vein, you should look at Mark Zelden's big toolbox on CBT Tape File 434. Especially nice is his IPLINFO REXX exec, that only requires copying to SYSPROC or SYSEXEC to use. The wealth of system information that can be had, straight from a REXX, is mind boggling. But Mark's stuff goes much farther than that, and once you're used to using some of it, you'll never know how you ever did without it. I don't know what I'd ever do without MXI (the huge monitor) from Rob Scott (CBT Files 409 and 410), or SHOWMVS and SHOWzOS (from Gilbert Saint-flour and Roland Schiradin (File 492)). These two monitors display much MVS system information in an easy-to-use way. The extent of the information shown by both of these packages is very great, almost unimaginable. And they are free. I don't know how I'd ever be able to run through a control block search without the LOOK TSO program from CBT File 264. LOOK can format many MVS control blocks, and chaining through them to see the incore data, is a breeze. I've written many an MVS utility with the info I've gotten through a core browse using LOOK. You can get LOOK to format any control block at all, using the actual IBM macro itself, so you can update the control block formatting with later versions of the macro, any time you want. The TSO Fullscreen ZAP program (originally from UCLA) on File 134 of the CBT Tape (a load module is on File 135) is so handy for looking at any DASD file, that I feel that if someone would have to do without it, it would be like using a horse-cart instead of a truck. It is true that AMASPZAP can do many of the things that Fullscreen ZAP can, but without any of the usability features. You can even search through a DASD pack to find deleted data, anywhere on it, using Fullscreen ZAP, in authorized mode, with its FULLVOL keyword. SUMMARY Progress is constantly being made, to improve our work environment. MVS tools are being written, and IBM is making many "usability improvements" to the MVS operating system as well. If you would compare our work environment today, to the green screens of 20 years ago, and the speed of today's machines and their networkability, to what wasn't there before, you might wonder how you ever were able to do your work at all, in the old days. But we did our work then (a team of horses can pull pretty big loads), and we do our work now too, only in a better manner. Much of the improvement, of course, depends on us--on our willingness to learn about the new gimmicks as they arrive. But besides our constant striving to improve our methods, we must ever be grateful to live in such a time, when the technology improvements keep pouring in. This gives us the food to nourish our thoughts. I hope that this month's column will serve to stimulate your thought processes. I hope that by mentioning a few of the tools now available to make our lives easier, you will go out yourselves and eventually find a few hundred of them. Then you'll be able to tackle bigger jobs (than a horse can do), in far less time. All the best of everything to all of you! I hope to see you here again, next month.