Mainframe, MVS and zOS Discussion

Hi,

Apart from asking the colleague and avoiding the idealistic situation of getting training, is there any good way to identify the existence of utilities like FILEAID, SyncSORT, AMBLIST on the mainframes; without really submitting a JCL or executing a REXX EXEC to see if they exist?

 AMBLIST should be in SYS1.LINKLIB as it is an IBM utility.  File Aid and Syncsort, however, are from independent software vendors and hence could reside anywhere on the system.  Short of asking your site support group, or running a program, there really is no way to know if they are installed.

Robert Sample wrote: AMBLIST should be in SYS1.LINKLIB as it is an IBM utility.  File Aid and Syncsort, however, are from independent software vendors and hence could reside anywhere on the system.  Short of asking your site support group, or running a program, there really is no way to know if they are installed.

Thanks Robert. Are there no universal rules to install such products so that one can know it easily? With outsourced business when there are not much senior left to help, getting this ready made information is really tough.

 No, there are no universal rules for third-party software.  One site I worked at made them all have SYS4 as the HLQ; the one I am at now uses SYS3 for production data sets and another HLQ for install libraries. Even IBM software rarely survives the install process untouched; IGY.VxRxMx.whatever is the default COBOL install HLQs but nobody seems to use them.

With outsourced business when there are not much senior left to help, getting this ready made information is really tough.

IBM recognizes the issue and has developed z/OS Management Facility (zosmf) to help with the installation and support of mainframe software, both system and products.  zosmf has the potential to help with collecting / organizing / using the site data but it will be another few releases of z/OS before it is really ready for everyone to use.  Other system products have gone through the same cycle of being introduced but it being a number of releases before the product is really useful (RACF and DB2 both come to mind as products this was true for).  One of the challenges of system programming is that no two sites do their mainframe installs and support exactly the same way; perhaps zosmf will help in this regard.

Is zOS Management Facility available to only system programmer?

to help with installation and support of mainframe software, both system and products

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that should answer Your question.
who does what, and the tools available are something specific to each organization!
ask Your support if zOSMF is available and to whom.