ICEGENER More Efficient than IEBGENER

MVS users know IEBGENER is used to copy files. However, it can also be very slow compared to SYNCSORT. The good news is that SYNCSORT has ICEGENER. The JCL for this is similar to IEBGENER except that it is more efficient.


I tried comparing these two programs by looking at the CPU time for reformatting a large file. The ICEGENER step used on the average, 0.12 CPU seconds while the IEBGENER used on the average, 0.15 CPU seconds. This may not be a huge but if you consider a larger file, then the impact may be noticeable. The drawback is that if there are SYSIN statements specified to ICEGENER, it calls IEBGENER instead.

The JCL to execute ICEGENER is similar to IEBGENER:

//GENER    EXEC PGM=ICEGENER//SYSUT1   DD  DSN=YOUR.DATA.SET.NAME,DISP=SHR//SYSUT2   DD  DSN=YOUR.NEWDATA.SET.NAME,DISP=(,CATLG),//            DCB=*.SYSUT1//SYSPRINT DD SYSOUT=*//SYSIN    DD DUMMY