David Betten wrote on 01/22/2008 06:53:52 AM:
> I haven't seen any job output yet but I wanted to share this information
> from DFSORT Application Programming Guide
>
> ***
> For a copy application, the SORTIN data set should not be the same as the
> SORTOUT data set or any OUTFIL data set because this can cause lost or
> incorrect data or unpredictable results.
> ***
>
> Frank probably knows more about this but it makes sense to me why we
could
> have problems for COPY.  When we do a SORT, all of the records from
SORTIN
> need to be read before we can write anything to SORTOUT.  This is because
> that last record read could potentially be the first record written.
> However, when we do a COPY, we can start writing to SORTOUT immediately.
> I would just try changing your sort step to write a new dataset and see
> what the results are.

Dave has it right.  I just got here and was going to write a similar post.
You SHOULD NOT use the same data set for SORTIN and SORTOUT for a COPY for
the reason Dave states that we are doing parallel read/write.  Depending on
how the data is arranged, you may get away with it, but you're taking a
risk.
We can't guarantee that you won't lose records.  So just don't do it.

You can use the same data set for SORTIN and SORTOUT for a SORT because we
don't do parallel read/write.  This is commonly known as a "suicide sort"
because the "input" data set is overwritten so if something goes wrong
(e.g. an I/O error) you don't have the input data set anymore.  So you
would want to be sure you have a backup for the input data set if you do
a suicide sort.

Frank Yaeger - DFSORT Development Team (IBM) - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Specialties: PARSE, JFY, SQZ, ICETOOL, IFTHEN, OVERLAY, Symbols, Migration

 => DFSORT/MVS is on the Web at http://www.ibm.com/storage/dfsort/

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