Herman Do you hope to find a program that shows the format of the screen, Where the literals are Where the application populated fields What the characteristics of the fields are (Modify? Highlight? etc) Or are you hoping for what is the source of the data that maps into the fields? The latter case is not a possibility to do programmatically as the data is not stored in the format. The early case can only be partially done. This is the difficulty ... An IMS format consists of 4 types of parts in two groups. MID/MOD device independent data stream for the application DIF/DOF device dependent (de) construction rules. Assuming no tricks are in place (like MFS bypass) Could could discover With a lot of work that screen line 2 column 69 contains a 10 position field. You could not discover The above mentioned field is customer number. Why is it a lot of work just to discover this? The device data stream is a single record in most cases not one record per row etc To understand the device data stream one needs to have at least knowledge of of the architecture of the device type Also the data formatting may be distorted On the database a phone number may be 10 digits but when displayed it might look like (123)456-7890 Why can't you know the field is customer number? MFS gets / puts the information at line 2 position 69 length 10 from the MID/MOD position 9-18. This can be discovered, however position 9-18 does not contain an application label To get the application information (and it would not be reliable) one would need the application source code (not the MFS source code) that shows the mapping of the MID/MOD hopefully in application terms. even then if you were lucky enough to see MID/MOD 9-18 contained something called CustomerNo Is it from the Customer Master DB or the Order Master DB? If all you want is the physical lay out of the screen you are in luck lots of products do this ... including the format utility its self. BTS (Batch Terminal Simulator) does a nice job. Oh did I mention that formats do not have to be application dependent. IMS provides about a dozen general purpose formats and more can be added. There are also a few options for bypassing MFS altogether and just passing the device a data stream. (Some folks once thought this was cute and or job security) It might be best to start you study from the log. Look at type x'01' and x'03' records (same DSECT can find the mapping by assembling DFSADSECT. It will tell you what MOD/MID if any was used for the message that cut the log record. x'01' are used for messages that come from the network x'03' are used for messages that come from programs Some people say x'01' is input x'03' is output ... these folks however are wrong. By tradition and to some extent IMS requirements message text is always Destination followed by a space followed by data in the first segment. The Destination is usually either a transaction name or an LTERM name. You might want to ask this question on the IMS Listserv IMS-L hosted at PO.MISSOURI.EDU Best wishes Avram Friedman
---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
