{"id":45,"date":"2014-12-11T11:27:39","date_gmt":"2014-12-11T11:27:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ibm-mainframes.com\/blog\/?p=45"},"modified":"2018-10-25T14:05:33","modified_gmt":"2018-10-25T08:35:33","slug":"pgmsort-pgmiceman-and-pgmsyncsort-are-they-all-same","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zmainframes.com\/zlog\/pgmsort-pgmiceman-and-pgmsyncsort-are-they-all-same\/","title":{"rendered":"PGM=SORT, PGM=ICEMAN and PGM=SYNCSORT. Are they all same?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Is there a difference?<\/span><\/h4>\n

What is the difference between PGM=SORT, PGM=ICEMAN, PGM=ICETOOL and PGM=SYNCSORT. Are they all IBM products. Which one should be used in JCLs?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This is one of the questions I see quite often at different places and have seen on our board www.zMainframes.com, too. So it make sense to talk in detail about it.<\/p>\n

ICEMAN, SORT are two of the program aliases that can be used to invoke the sort product. ICEMAN is the program name for DFSORT. You can invoke DFSORT with PGM=ICEMAN. DFSORT is also shipped with an alias of SORT, so you can use PGM=SORT too.<\/p>\n

What’s official about it?<\/span><\/h4>\n

DFSORT’s official three-character identifier is ICE, so all of the DFSORT modules start with ICE (for example – ICEMAN, ICETOOL, ICEGENER etc…) and all of the DFSORT messages start with ICE (ICExxxs).<\/p>\n

Other sort products, Syncsort, CA-Sort use SORT or ICEMAN as an alias, most of the time but this based on experience and it might differ for a specific shop. So when you use PGM=SORT or PGM=ICEMAN, you’ll invoke the sort product installed at your site.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In nutshell – PGM=ICEMAN and PGM=SORT are equivalent. However many a times, you might hear a [i]lead[\/i] saying that, ” “ICEMAN is performance wise better than SORT”. To get to the bottom of that, if you look a the Chapter 2 of “z\/OS DFSORT Application Programming Guide”: http:\/\/publibz.boulder.ibm.com\/cgi-bin\/bookmgr_OS390\/BOOKS\/ICE1CA20\/2.3?DT=20060615185603, syntax shows PGM=SORT and PGM=ICEMAN as equivalent and later it says:<\/p>\n

[quote]If you do not use a cataloged procedure, use PGM= either with the actual name of the sort module (ICEMAN) or with one of its aliases: SORT, IERRCO00, or IGHRCO00. Be sure that the alias has not been changed at your site.[\/quote]<\/p>\n

So unless somebody at your site changed the shipped aliases, whoever says you that “ICEMAN is performance wise better than SORT” doesn’t know what they are talking about.<\/p>\n

How do I check it?<\/span><\/h4>\n

Obviously, you can confirm if DFSORT is invoked by PGM=ICEMAN and PGM=SORT at your site by trying both of them and checking the messages.<\/p>\n

Syncsort is a sort product produced by SyncSort Inc. CA-Sort is a sort product produced by another company called Computer Associate, CA.. DFSORT is the IBM sort product. EXEC PGM=SORT or EXEC PGM=ICEMAN are typically executing IBM’s sort product, although some sites use aliases for Syncsort so EXEC PGM=SORT actually invokes Syncsort.<\/p>\n

Conclusion:<\/span><\/h4>\n

Actually, \u00a0you probably should use NONE of these. Most sites allows you to enter EXEC SORT (or EXEC PROC=SORT) to invoke the site sort product via a PROCEDURE (or PROC) that includes most of the DD statements needed for a sort. While some sites have more than one sort product, they are not cheap and hence most sites only use one sort product so it is fairly rare to have a choice of which to use.<\/p>\n

Thanks for stopping by,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is there a difference? What is the difference between PGM=SORT, PGM=ICEMAN, PGM=ICETOOL and PGM=SYNCSORT. Are they all IBM products. Which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[45,49,48,47,46,44,37,51,50,52],"class_list":["post-45","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sort","tag-ibm","tag-icegener-syncsort","tag-iceman","tag-icetool","tag-jcl","tag-mainframe","tag-mainframes","tag-syncgener","tag-synctool","tag-zos"],"amp_enabled":true,"rttpg_featured_image_url":null,"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"Anuj Dhawan","author_link":"https:\/\/zmainframes.com\/zlog\/author\/anuj-dhawan\/"},"rttpg_comment":18,"rttpg_category":"sort<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"Is there a difference? What is the difference between PGM=SORT, PGM=ICEMAN, PGM=ICETOOL and PGM=SYNCSORT. Are they all IBM products. Which […]","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zmainframes.com\/zlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zmainframes.com\/zlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zmainframes.com\/zlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zmainframes.com\/zlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zmainframes.com\/zlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/zmainframes.com\/zlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":994,"href":"https:\/\/zmainframes.com\/zlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions\/994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zmainframes.com\/zlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zmainframes.com\/zlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zmainframes.com\/zlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}