I know this must have been discussed in the past but a search of the archives has not turned up a definitive answer.
We are working with a tape hardware migration solution that may end up with us needing to change the device type code in MVS catalog records for existing tape data sets. The data sets will not be recreated but the catalog device type codes may need to be updated to direct device allocation to use the new devices rather than the old devices for input data sets. The MVS catalog has never been my area of expertise so this raises a few questions. 1. What do we use for the catalog update? Are there any z/OS provided facilities to do this or does a custom solution need to be developed? Doing some searching has only turned up Dave Cartwright's ICF3490 program from the CBTTAPE File 172 which does direct catalog record updates. This could be adapted, but are there better techniques to get this update done? 2. Does anything need to be done, in the catalog records, for handling of an esoteric (that is, an esoteric used at data set creation time)? I'm not an allocation expert but from recent observations it seems to me that device selection for input tape data set allocation is somehow influenced by the creation esoteric and not just by the device type code. Is this true or was it just happenstance? 3. Are any changes necessary to a tape management system's TMC for a dynamically changed device type? Of the five TMS'es we support, I don't recall any of them doing anything device type dependent that would override or conflict with the MVS allocation selection, but if there is something to be concerned about here I'd like to know about it beforehand. Thanks for any input you may offer. Chuck Arney Arney Computer Systems ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
