Widening the perspective. Versatile IPCS is used to analyze all sorts of dumps--SVC, standalone, SYSM--as well as GTF trace, which can be for hardware or software or both. So why is it so little used outside of the 'system programming' inner sanctum? At my one and only GUIDE conference in 1980, one session on IPCS focused on the question of usage. This was in 1980. At that time IPCS required SAF READ access to SYS1.PARMLIB. It had to be THE system PARMLIB. A copy would not do. The problem for many shops was that access to PARMLIB was prohibited by for general users. Meanwhile ISVs rallied to provide user-oriented products that cost money--IPCS is 'free'--but did not require challenging corporate security policies.
Somewhere along the line IPCS's PARMLIB requirement was dropped, but it was too late to overcome the ISV offerings in the public mind. I was once called in to help with a COBOL application that was receiving inexplicable abends. The ISV product did not help. I set up a SLIP trap to capture the 'first abend', which turned out to be a run of the mill S0C7 caused by bad input data. That abend was further mucked up by an ancient SPIE routine that corrupted registers and created a different, wholly unrelated abend. So why is it called 'IPCS' anyway? Interactive Problem Control System. Originally IPCS provided an elaborate mechanism for managing an inventory of dumps and traces. That function disappeared altogether even as analytical functions were enhanced. Like, why is it called 'TSO'? There's no time sharing, and it's not optional. Old names persist like those carved on headstones. . . J.O.Skip Robinson Southern California Edison Company Electric Dragon Team Paddler SHARE MVS Program Co-Manager 323-715-0595 Mobile 626-543-6132 Office ⇐=== NEW robin...@sce.com -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> On Behalf Of Colin Paice Sent: Thursday, April 22, 2021 10:10 AM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: (External):Re: Printing GTF trace? *** EXTERNAL EMAIL - Use caution when opening links or attachments *** For processing IBM product GTF traces you use a command like GTF USR(ALL) to process "user" records. Each product has a format number, MQ has D9. When a record is processed, the GTF processing in IPCS looks up this format number xx, and then invokes a routine AMDUSRxx (or AMDUSRD9 for MQ). This program takes the record and formats it. You could write your own formatter. The basic record structure is well documented, but the products specific stuff may not be documented. These programs typically write to IPCSPRTN, but could write to any other dd statement., I used to have my own program that did special processing of the data. This wrote to more than one output dataset. MVS (Non USR) records have special formatting such as options SSCH, SVC etc. Colin On Thu, 22 Apr 2021 at 14:18, Peter Relson <rel...@us.ibm.com> wrote: > Isn't using file IPCSPRNT the intended way to print something produced > by IPCS report(s)? > > Allocate data set x with RECFM VBA and suitable LRECL/BLKSIZE such as > LRECL 137 BLKSIZE 27998 or LRECL 255 BLKSIZE 6144 TSO ALLOC > F(IPCSPRNT) DA(x) do your IPCS commands with the PRINT operand > (whether that be GTF or > other) > IPCS Close Print > > Peter Relson > z/OS Core Technology Design ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
