Hello, I just ran into this on my jcl manual, it's a few years old but I imagine still holds true:
With SMS, both the expiration date specified on EXPDT and defined in the data class for an SMS-managed data set can be limited by a maximum expiration date defined in the management class for the data set. I interpret this as, the 'expire non-usage' on a management class is the maximum period that a file will be kept, but if an EXPDT or RETPD is specified without exceeding the retention on a mgmt class, it will honor the EXPDT or RETPD. -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Starr, Alan Sent: Tuesday, December 06, 2011 2:24 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Management classes and expiration dates revisited Back in October, a question was asked about the DF/SMS management class "expiration attributes" fields. To me, both the ISMF help screen and the manual (DFSMShsm Storage Administration - "Specifying expiration attributes" in chapter 2) indicate that BOTH "expire after days non-usage" AND "expire after date/days", when specified, must be satisfied. John Gilmore did some testing and determined that, when both fields specify something other than NOLIMIT, the EARLIEST date appears to takes precedence. Here is his text: Five pairs of data sets--different DSORGs, which proved to be irrelevant--were used EXPIRE NON-USAGE 5 EXPIRE DAYS/DATE 5 was specified for both datasets in each pair. The first, call it A, was opened at 1700 on four successive days. The second, B, went unopened. Both A and B expired after five days. Last week, someone asked if these management class fields takes precedence over the EXPDT saved in a dataset's DSCB. A responder specified "Management Class overrides expdt in the vtoc," which differs from my experience and this text I found in the aforementioned DFSMShsm manual: The expiration attributes, EXPIRE AFTER DAYS NON-USAGE and EXPIRE AFTER DATE/DAYS, govern how long a data set associated with the management class is kept if no expiration date is listed in the data set VTOC entry or if the VTOC entry contains an INVALID EXPIRATION DATE. I was wondering if any of you have discovered situations in which the MC fields override the DSCB EXPDT? Which elements, features or products operate this way? Thanks for your input! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
