SYNCSORT: SUM FIELDS

SYNCSORT is one of the more powerful tools on the mainframe. One of its features is it can sum up a specific column in your file based on some keys. Say you have a file that contains items sold and number of items sold per transaction as seen below:

Using SYNCSORT (or DFSORT) to Automate Mainframe Code Migration

My development team was involved in a project years ago that required migrating 200 Configuration Items (CI's) such as JCL, PROC, SYSIN Cards, Source code, DBRMLIB members, Loadlib members, not to mention running BIND Packages on DB2 programs. The scarier part is that the migration needs to be done in a day. Our installation does not have a tool to help us migrate CI's so everything had to be done manually.

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.

SYNCSORT Advanced Features

Many use SYNCSORT for sorting files. But SYNCSORT can do a lot more. It can be used to format records. Because of this feature, it can be used for other purposes. (These features are also available in DFSORT, although some features work differently in DFSORT).