MVS TOOLS AND TRICKS OF THE TRADE FEBRUARY 2008 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. CBT Tape Recent Developments - Part 1 Every once in a while, we devote an installment or two of this column to displaying some of the newer contributions to the CBT Tape MVS Utilities collection, which have been either submitted recently, or have been considerably enhanced lately. The CBT Tape collection can be found at www.cbttape.org, and you don't need to be a member of anything, or to know a password, to get any of the thousands of software tools, large or small, which are posted there. I've just looked at the title index for this column, and I see that for several years now, I haven't written an article of this type here. So here goes an attempt at a half-decent summary of as much of the new stuff as I can fit into this space. The last column of this type was written in June of 2004, and after looking, I've discovered that over 380 changes have been made to the collection since then. So even though I surely can't do justice to a complete description of all those updates, I guess I can try to hit the highlights by describing a few of them. As of this writing, the newest changed files in the website at www.cbttape.org are still in the UPDATES page, and not in the CBT page. Therefore, if you want to see the newest CBT files, please go to the UPDATES page at the www.cbttape.org website. In general, I'd always recommend going to the UPDATES page for any file you might be interested in, and only afterwards, if that file number isn't in UPDATES, only THEN go to the CBT page and look there. Even though the CBT Tape collection exists (primarily) as a website, the collection still resides on real tapes. The last actual tape that was cut, was Version 475, cut on Dec. 20, 2007. All file updates since Version 471, created on Feb. 28, 2006, are found (as of this writing) on the UPDATES PAGE ONLY, at www.cbttape.org. THE PDS TSO COMMAND, ETC. One of the highlights of the CBT Tape collection has always been the (practically indispensable for those who use it) PDS TSO command tool, whose source is found on File 182 of the CBT Tape. The PDS command manipulates datasets, particularly partitioned datasets or pds'es, hence its name. The PDS command tool can do several thousand different functions, literally, and is a great time saver for those who know how to use it. Since its original authors, mainly Bruce Leland and Steve Smith, made a commercial product out of PDS back in 1989 (it is now called Startool FDM (TM), and distributed by Serena Software), John Kalinich has continued to enhance the free version of PDS, still on the CBT Tape collection on File 182, for everyone to keep enjoying for free. Every few months, John sends me a refresh of the PDS command source, which he has kept working on, even as we write. The main enhancement of PDS since 2004 has been (almost complete) support for PDSE's (extended PDS'es), which was added by John, with much help from Greg Price, whose REVIEW file browsing program (to be discussed next) from CBT File 134, has long supported PDSE's. Versions of the PDS command which support PDSE's are called PDS 8.6, as opposed to PDS 8.5, which does not support PDSE's. The current level of the PDS command package, as of the time of this writing, is PDS 8.6.08. John has supplied (in the $$$MODS member of CBT File 182) a list of new subcommands that have been added to the free PDS command package. These are: 1. MXIBAT: DISPLAY (in the PDS log) MVS EXTENDED INFORMATION CULLED FROM THE MXI PACKAGE (CBT Tape Files 409 and 410) if MXI is installed on your system. 2. SRCHFOR: SEARCH MEMBERS WITH ISPF SEARCH-FOR PROGRAM 3. DISASM: DISASSEMBLE LOAD MODULE 4. DLINK: RECONSTRUCT OBJECT CODE FOR A LOAD MODULE 5. XMIT: XMIT MEMBERS WITH TSO TRANSMIT 6. OFFLOAD: OFFLOAD MEMBERS TO A SEQUENTIAL FILE 7. SMPGEN: CREATE SMP/E CONTROLS FOR MEMBERS 8. LMA: LIST DEBUG TOOL LOAD MODULE ANALYSIS INFO (if IBM's LMA is installed) 9. CPKMAP: VOLUME TRACK MAP WITH COMPAKTOR (if FDR products (commercial) are installed) Many additional changes to PDS 8.6.xx have also been documented in the $$$MODS member of File 182. Since many additional (free) TSO commands and programs are necessary to be present in your TSO environment for some of the subcommands of PDS to work properly, these have now been packaged in File 182 as an XMIT'ed load library, in member UTILXMIT. Therefore, you don't have to separately install all of these programs from their various source files on the CBT Tape. Instead, you just have to TSO RECEIVE the UTILXMIT member of File 182, and you have a load library of all the necessary commands, to copy into your load library that makes all those commands accessible to your TSO session. ENHANCEMENTS TO REVIEW (CBT FILE 134) Bill Godfrey wrote the first version of the REVIEW TSO command in 1980, as a general purpose file browser. Starting in 1983 and unbeknownst to us until 1989 (because he lives in Australia and there was no Internet then), Greg Price started enhancing the REVIEW command and adding features. Greg has never stopped doing that. Today REVIEW has grown from 4,000-odd lines of code to (now) well over 50,000 lines of code. Using the REVIEW command, you can now look at (browse) just about any kind of MVS file that exists, including VSAM and HFS files. And now there's a file EDITOR too, that looks like, and very much is used like, the ISPF editor. But REVIEW (and its editor) can be used in RAW TSO, without ISPF being present. As a browser, if ISPF is present, REVIEW uses the available ISPF windows. If ISPF is not present, REVIEW uses the full screen under TSO. One of the nicer uses for the REVIEW command is to look at SMF records in an SMF file, either the primary or secondary file on disk, in real time, or at one of the backup SMF files, either on disk or on tape. REVIEW has a very unique ability to find all the SMF records you are looking for, in an SMF file, and to format them for you, to show you what they mean. If you're REVIEWing an SMF file (containing SMF records) and you want to format the records as you're seeing them, just type the word SMF on the command line, and you'll see a lot of information about what the records really mean. To find a given record type, just enter the FS nn primary command, where nn is a record type. You'll find the first record of that type, like FS 21, which finds the next Type 21 SMF record. FS 21 ALL will find ALL of the Type 21 records in the file, starting from the position (in the file) where you currently are. As of this writing, the REVIEW command is at level 41.0. If you really want to know the principal changes that have occurred in REVIEW since mid-2004 levels 38.x and 39.0, please refer to the REVNOTES member of File 134 at the bottom of the member. I don't have space to include all of the level 41.0 changes, but the REVEDIT (the REVIEW editor) changes should be of interest to all of you. They are as follows: R41.0 enhancements to REVEDIT include: - add TF and TS line commands. - add SORT primary command. - add CREATE and REPLACE primary commands. - colon command prefix applies command to current line. eg. :TS - support ASM highlighting of source code in a jobstream. So you see that the REVIEW EDITOR (invoked by an UPDATE subcommand in REVIEW) is now becoming more and more ISPF- like. Remember that you can do file editing with REVIEW even under RAW TSO, with no ISPF present at all. So REVIEW is a fine recovery tool to have, when ISPF won't come up. Load modules for the REVIEW command, and all the subprograms and aliases it uses (including HEL and FSH - fullscreen scrollable TSO HELP), can be found in the load library on CBT File 135. So installation of REVIEW can be supremely easy. Just copy the correct load modules from File 135 and make them accessible to your TSO session. See File 134, member REVINST, for further help in installing REVIEW. LIONEL DYCK'S STUFF, AND MORE Lionel Dyck has quietly accumulated a large collection of very useful tools, in CBT Tape Files 312, 313, and 314. Lionel is an old MVS hand, and he has made many contributions to the field of MVS sysprogging for a long time. Since Lionel's contributions to the CBT Tape are so many, I had to break them into three files, with the member names in alphabetical order. Lionel's personal website is www.lbdsoftware.com, but his stuff is also on Files 312 thru 314 on the CBT Tape, and Lionel tries to keep the CBT Tape collection current, with his latest updates. Probably the best-known of Lionel's many applications is XMITIP, a system of sending emails from an SMTP session on your MVS machine. This is no ordinary simple email application. There are extremely many bells and whistles found in XMITIP, where you can change or format practically anything you want to put into an email. There is even an XMITIP news group on www.yahoogroups.com which is a forum for XMITIP enhancement suggestions and questions. XMITIP is found on CBT File 314, because it begins with an X, at the end of the alphabet. Another of Lionel's famous applications, is FTPB, an ISPF dialog which makes it easy to send FTP transmissions in either the foreground or as JCL, to make a batch job. FTPB is found on File 312. Another File 312 gem, which I use all the time, is LSTPROC, a small REXX application which reads your JES2 PROCLIB list, allocates the PROC files in SHR mode, and invokes ISRDDN to display the PROCLIB concatenations. This is very simple to use, and it beats all the alternatives. A third small application that is very useful, is Lionel's PARMLIB checker, called PRMCK. This is a REXX that checks the syntax of PARMLIB members, and is therefore very useful. I don't have more space to elaborate here, but I suggest that you download Files 312, 313, and 314 from the UPDATES page of www.cbttape.org, and see Lionel's gems for yourself. TO BE CONTINUED Today, I could only hit some of the bigger packages and their high points. To do any justice to the CBT Tape files and how they have changed in the recent past, you'll have to go to www.cbttape.org and look at the UPDATES page to see for yourselves. Nevertheless, I hope to continue on this topic next month, and talk about some of the newer packages on the CBT Tape collection which are very innovative and novel. I wish all of you the best of everything, and I hope to see you here again, next month.