Some of the programs you'll use on the mainframe are also known as Utilities. Utilities perform a specific task and can be called through JCL to do things like copy data sets and members, sort records, generate data. In this section, we'll take a look at just a few of the more commonly used z/OS Utilities. We'll start with System Utilities. Here, you'll find ICKDSF which is used to Install, Initialize and Manage dustbin. There's also IEHINITT with two T's at the end. That's used to initialize tapes for long-term storage, and there's IEHLIST which is a utility used to list entries in a PDS to look at it does this volume Table of Contents or v-tech or to view an operating system volumes Catalog. You'll notice that with these there's a sort of a format going on. There's a prefix, followed by an abbreviated, representation of what it does. Well the prefixes correspond with the z/OS component that they work in. For example, ICK is Device Support Facilities, IEH is Data Facility Product, DFP and IEF is Allocation, IPL Jazz Scheduler, and well it's actually a number of core components. Then there's data set utilities which typically start with IEB. You may be wondering why we're spending so much time on data sets and why there are so many data set utilities. Well the simple fact is that the mainframe deals in data, it's constantly creating records based on what applications are doing, and those applications are updating records. There's always going to be need to take information created in one place and re-purpose it to be used as input for a programmer made into a report. More importantly, it means you can handle those types of situations quickly, instead of editing records individually, line by line by hand because you needed to remove the fifth column of each record. Another word about utility is a lot of times the utility is multipurpose like a Swiss Army knife. So if you uses one set of parameters, it'll create a data-set but use it with another set of parameters and it generates Debug Data, and the only way to really know what a utility is capable of is to look at the documentation. Also point out that you can often use different utilities to do the same thing. They might do them slightly differently but there's more than one way to copy a data set. So let's look at that. IEBCOPY as you might guess it's there for copying but it can also do merges of PDS's and PDSE's. It can do a compression of PDS's and PDSE's, and it can even convert PDS's into PDSE's and vice versa. Here's what invoking It looks like. We're using it here to copy one PDS into another PDS. There's no input needed just specifying the two data-set straight down here. Quick quiz on IEBCOPY and it's a true or false. I can use IEBCOPY to merge v-Sam data sets. The answer to that is, "false," it's for PDS's and PDSE's only when we want to work in v-Sam data sets we need to use another utility which we'll take a look at later. Here's IEBGENER which does not mean that it's utility for people brand new to the mainframe. The name is I-E-B the prefix for data set utility and then G-E-N-E-R for Generate Records, and it can be used to backup a data set, produce a partition data set from members of sequential data set, print out the contents of data sets, and even convert data formats and change settings for a data set. Very nice to know about all those capabilities. Here it is getting called through JCL. We're copying one data set to another, and you can see we're also specifying a few parameters about how we want that new data set to be created. DFSORT is a high-performance Sort Merge Copy Analysis and Reporting Product for z/OS and it can handle data at the record field and bit-level. This is one of the biggest Swiss army knives out there because it can sort, merge, and copy but while it's doing that it can also reformat data along the way. So you can use it to change date formats, edit, delete, and add fields, repeat records. You can even use it to perform arithmetic on data summing up values in records while you're sorting or merging them. It's important to know about all the capabilities of these utilities because you will be in a situation where you're presented with a set of data that looks one way, and it needs to be formatted in a different way for a program that take it. When you're able to say I finally got to use that function of DFSORT or IEBCOPY, and it works it's a great feeling. So before writing your own code to do something and starting from scratch check the utilities because chances are someone else had to do it before and maybe there's a utility for it you can use. Lastly, I want to show you a special program IEFBR14. This is an IEF. So it has to do with allocation, and I can tell you that BR14 means Branch to Register 14 which is an assembler instruction. All you really need to know is that IEFBR14 is a program designed to do nothing. So you remember how in JCL you can specify new Catalog delete for a data set and it will allocate a new member, and it will catalog that member if the job ran correctly? Well, what if all we want to do is create a new data set. That method in JCO is a pretty handy way of doing it and it's a shame. We have to do it while calling a program because I'm really not interested in what running that program is actually going to do. That's where IEFBR14 comes in. It let's use those JCL features while executing a program, and that program is actually just there because you have to specify a program it does nothing. So in this example we're creating a new data set with new Catalog and we're not specifying the third parameter because we just know it's going to work, and then we're also using this DD statement to delete an existing data set. It's kind of a hack but it's an official hack, and people use it all over the place. Actually, know a guy who has IEFBR14 as their custom license plate. Last one, IDCAMS this one is for generating and modifying v-Sam as well as non v-Sam data sets, and I feel like I keep saying this but you become an expert in IDCAMS, and he get that across to an employer that's time well spent right there. Speaking of time well spent that brings us to the end of this lesson.
