Joined: 26 Apr 2004 Posts: 4652 Location: Raleigh, NC, USA
Cool. I was wondering how many more iterations of V1Rx were going to be done.
Some interesting JCL enhancements coming:
In z/OS V2.1, a number of JCL improvements are planned:
• Support for passing parameter lists up to 32,760 bytes in length to a program from JCL. A new PARMDD DD statement keyword is planned to allow more than 100 characters to be passed to any program in JCL. A new LONGPARM binder attribute is planned to enable APF-authorized programs to use this new function. No changes are planned to be needed for unauthorized programs. This new support is intended to make it easier to pass a large number of parameters to a program without writing intermediate programs.
• Enhancements for symbol processing in JCL in JES2 environments. This new function is designed to make both JCL and system symbols available during job execution. For example, you will be able to specify that symbols be used in instream data sets, such as SYSIN data sets, and that symbols be retrieved from the system using new programming services. This support is intended to make symbols more usable and accessible and to make it easier to use identical copies of JCL in multiple environments.
• Support for the use of exported JCL symbols that are accessible in other contexts, including programmatic access. A corresponding function is planned for Language Environment
These are some that I found interesting from a Storage perspective mainly. I particularly like the underlined ones.
GDPS/Hyperswap-
Basic HyperSwap® to be enhanced to reduce the number of "false freezes" by detecting common reasons for PPRC link suspensions that do not require a volume to be frozen when you specify a new configuration option
DFP / DFsms/hsm/dss/CAS - DFSMShsm to provide automatic policy-based movement of SMS-managed data within the primary (Level 0) storage hierarchy, as well as continued support of ML1 & ML2. DFSMShsm to use existing storage class and storage group constructs to recognize different device characteristics within the primary storage hierarchy and apply management class policies to move the data from one class of device to another. Sounds like it would use Easytier to move stuff around the device heirarchies, SSD, HDD & SATA nearline using policy-based management based on age and the elapsed time since last reference. Will provide improved automation and better management of storage resources.
- further small DFSMShsm enhancements are designed to provide storage constraint relief, improve recycle processing.
- DFSMShsm to do parallel recalls for datasets allocated by Batch jobs to reduce elapsed times.
- DFSMShsm Fast Replication support to add support for consistency groups, data set recovery to different volumes and dataset names.
- DFSMShsm will improve performance for tape and disk devices by increasing the multitasking level in new SETSYS command. Reduce the elapsed time required to migrate large numbers of small data sets significantly.
- DFSMShsm to allow you to use up to 254 tape volumes. (from 40)
- DFSMS support for PDSE GDG's as for ordinary PDS's.
- DFSMS to extend the function to specify that explanatory text for a number of DFSMS abends be included in job output. This will make it easier to determine the reasons for these errors more quickly
- DFSMS and Allocation processing enhanced to allow all the members of a GDG be returned in order from oldest to newest when the GDG base name is specified without a generation number, to avoid having to sort the data.
- DFSMSdfp to add Modify CAS command parameters, and to specificy values from the SYSCATxx member or LOADxx member (one not required early during IPL processing)
- CAS additional information to be made available for easier determination of serialization contention problems that CAS processing. Detection added for resource contention for SYSIGGV2 and SYSZVVDS resources, and CAS allocation lock.
- VSAM SMB access bias (ACCBIAS) specifications can be made in Dataclases instead of JCL
- DFP to further optimize data placement with significant enhancements to policy-based storage tiering.
- Support data tiering, for intelligent policy-based movement of data (after its been allocated), to help you better meet availability, utilization, and performance goals automatically
- new MODIFY VLF command is planned to allow you to specify that the contents of a COFVLFxx parmlib member.
- extend support for the VSAM record-level sharing (RLS) environment to catalogs in order to allow you to improve both single-system and shared catalog performance
- Catalog support for VSAM RLS planned for user and volume catalogs in a Parallel Sysplex to substantially reduce catalog contention and improve performance. Additional catalog enhancements designed to suspend catalog requests for a specified catalog across a sysplex to allows minimizing application disruption during catalog maintenance.
- UNIX System Services automount facility is planned to be enhanced to support setting permission bits other than the default for file systems it creates, the use of static system symbols in the master file, and other usability improvements
- new zFS file system version designed to significantly improve performance for file systems with large directories, and a larger maximum file system size of 16 TB for greater scalability
- New support allowing you to preserve user catalog connector alias entries when you temporarily delete a usercatalog so they need not be redefined when the catalog is reallocated, and prevent new catalog entries using those aliases from being defined until the new catalog is available.
- New format PDSE Version 2 will allow all unused space to be released, consolidate directory pages when possible, improve read performance, improve VSCR. API planned to support 125 times larger members in many circumstances. Iintended to provide benefit of using PDSEs in place of PDSs and make it feasible to use PDSEs instead of multiple large sequential data sets, and improve performance for most PDSE read operations.
- New Extended Format Version 2 data set. DFSMSdss will support the use of FlashCopy® for Version 2 Extended Format sequential data sets when copying nonstriped multivolume Extended Format data sets, in addition to the existing support for other Extended Format data sets.
- IDCAMS REPRO processing to be enhanced to support CI mode processing for nonstriped multivolume Extended Format data sets
- DFSMSdfp to improve tape performance by processing consecutive files without reading each prior tape file's trailer labels when DISP=PASS is coded on the DD statement.
- DFSMS, improvements in the processing of catalog aliases are planned. For data set aliases in the master catalog that specify a different high-level qualifier for a data set, the system will be designed to reorient the search with the master catalog or the appropriate user catalog. Also, creation dates are planned to be stored for alias entries and listed by the IDCAMS utility. - IDCAMS DELETE command to be extended to allow mask for deleting members from PDS and PDSE data sets - IEBCOPY to accept special characters on SELECT statements that identify patterns of member names to be copied by the COPYGROUP command, using percent signs (%) and asterisks (*)
- DFSMS to make allocation of SMS-managed data sets better aligned with the cluster and extent pool boundaries on IBM DS8000® devices to improve data set Fast Replication operations and more uniform performance for striped data sets by changing SMS volume selection to attempt to allocate multi-volume data sets and extensions within a cluster or Storage Facility Image (SFI) based on storage class attributes and to allocate striped data sets and their extensions across different extent pools when possible.
- A new VARY SMS command operand is planned to allow you to refresh volume space information stored by SMS so that the output of commands such as ISMF LISTSYS will reflect up-to-date information. (Hopefully for ISMF as well)
- Dynamic Volume Count is planned to be extended to support VSAM RLS data sets once all sharing systems are running z/OS V2.1
- New IGDSMSxx parmlib member parameter and SETSMS command operand to allow you to specify that PDS's be unconditionally allocated as PDSE when DSNTYPE=LIBRARY is specified, whether or not directory space is also specified in JCL.
- New ACS variable to indicate whether data sets are eligible to reside in the EAS on EAVs, intended to allow you to direct data sets to appropriate storage groups and set appropriate data set space allocation values.
- Space can be released for a SMS-managed multi-volume sequential data set on disk storage using the RLSE JCL parameter or equivalent function in dynamic allocation. (Also using option F in 3.4) - When a tape data set is extended to a new volume and a new JFCB extension (JFCBX) is required for it, the system will create one automatically rather than issuing abend 837 with reason code 08 (How many decades have we waited for that!)
- IDCAMS utility will be designed to allow you to use the ALTER command to nullify the management class for an SMS-managed data set.
- IDCAMS DIAGNOSE processing for generation data groups (GDGs) is planned to be enhanced to detect additional problems
- DFSMSdss (and hsm) to support RESET keyword on the RESTORE command used for physical (full-volume and track-based) restore operations to reset change flags on restored datasets/volumes.
-GRS to support synchronously changing an exclusive enqueue to a shared enqueue. Also new JCL JOB statement keyword to specify access to data sets can transition from exclusive to shared after the last step in which they are allocated with a disposition of OLD, NEW, or MOD. (plus a JES2 initialization statement to specify whether this function should be allowed, and whether it should be default if not specified in JCL). Should allow more parallelism in resource processing.
- zFS to significantly improve performance for file systems with large directories. A new file system version is designed to store directories in a tree for faster processing, particularly for large directories. A number of conversion options are planned to allow you to convert existing file systems to the new format. Also, this new version is designed to remove explicit limits on the number of names that can be stored in zFS directories, including the prior limit of 65,535 subdirectories, and to increase the maximum file system size to 16 TB from 4 TB. This new support is intended to allow you to migrate HFS file systems that contain directories with a large number of files to zFS.
- zFS file system processing and DFSMSdss are planned to be changed to help reduce unnecessary backups for mounted file system data sets. This function is designed to set an indication that a file system has changed, allow its use in DFSMSdss dump command filtering to back up changed file systems, and reset it after a successful dump
- IDCAMS support for VSAM record-level sharing data sets is planned to be enhanced to access VSAM RLS data sets in RLS mode. This support is planned for IDCAMS PRINT, REPRO, IMPORT, and EXPORT functions.
JCL / JES2 / SDSF
- Support for passing parameter lists up to 32,760 bytes in length to a program from JCL. A new PARMDD DD statement keyword is planned to allow more than 100 characters to be passed to any program in JCL
- Enhanced symbol processing in JCL in JES2 environments to allow both JCL and system symbols available during job execution. For example, you will be able to specify that symbols be used in instream data sets, such as SYSIN data sets
- Support for new, JES-independent JCL specifications. New SYSTEM and SYSAFF keywords for the JOB statement are planned to allow you to specify z/OS MVS™ system names, JES2 MAS member names.
- JES2 support to specify the JES2 procedure library concatenation to be used for a job, improve OUTPUT processing by allowing you to specify that an OUTPUT statement be used for multiple SYSOUT data sets
- Support for a new callable service designed to provide programmatic access to the value of a specified JCL symbol. This is intended to provide another way to pass information to running programs from JCL
- JES2 and SDSF to support over 4 billion spin data sets (up to 4,294,967,296) from 10 million (9,999,999).
DFSORT
- DFSORT allowing symbol processing for more SORT commands
- DFSORT to improve memory resource management to better balance the memory requirements of multiple large concurrent sort operations and other workloads. Uses TUNE option to pre-check before allocating memory taking only what's required incrementally. Memory objects increased to 1TB max from 64GB.
TSO/E & ISPF / REXX
- TSO/E is planned to provide a number of REXX enhancements to EXECIO, LISTDSI, and STORAGE, and to provide a new variable to indicate the level of the operating system. These enhancements are intended to make it easier to retrieve information about data sets in the extended addressing space (EAS) of extended address volumes (EAVs), as well as multi-volume, PDSE, and concatenated data sets; to support I/O to undefined and spanned record format data sets; to improve the usability of EXECIO
- TSO/E will be designed to provide additional information on the screen when an attempt to log on fails for a number of reasons other than user authentication failures.
- SYSREXX to support additional functions when using REXX under TSO/E such as the CONSOLE host command environment, allowing you to issue system and subsystem commands, monitor message traffic with an extended MCS console session in a SYSREXX exec such as one intended to provide system automation functions.
Joined: 03 Oct 2009 Posts: 1788 Location: Bloomington, IL
Pete Wilson wrote:
- TSO/E is planned to provide a number of REXX enhancements to EXECIO, LISTDSI, and STORAGE, and to provide a new variable to indicate the level of the operating system. These enhancements are intended to make it easier to retrieve information about data sets in the extended addressing space (EAS) of extended address volumes (EAVs), as well as multi-volume, PDSE, and concatenated data sets; to support I/O to undefined and spanned record format data sets; to improve the usability of EXECIO
(Emphasis added.)
I asked my team lead if we should make it a policy to refuse to do zaps. His response: "Sounds dangerous but cool!"
