I believe an application can create a short FB block in the middle of an output 
data set with the TRUNC macro. 
Bill Fairchild 

----- Original Message -----

From: "Steve Comstock" <[email protected]> 
To: [email protected] 
Sent: Sunday, December 8, 2013 10:00:49 AM 
Subject: Re: Something to Think About - Optimal PDS Blocking 

On 12/8/2013 8:58 AM, Jon Perryman wrote: 
> With the exception of DISP=MOD with multiple open/writes and that the last 
block will always be, I don't see the difference between FB and FBS. How would 
FB create a short block in the middle? 

Well, except for DISP=MOD, it won't: it is a DSIP=MOD situation 
that allows the possibility. 


-Steve Comstock 


> 
> Jon Perryman 
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
>> From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> 
>> To: [email protected] 
>> Cc: 
>> Sent: Saturday, December 7, 2013 10:55 PM 
>> Subject: Re: Something to Think About - Optimal PDS Blocking 
>> 
>>>   Yes, however FBS stands for Fixed Block Standard, not Spanned. 
>> Exactly. And the last record in an FBS data set can be "short", i.e. 
>> less than lrecl. The short record denotes the end of the data set. And all 
>> the 
>> utility programs know it and stop processing once they reach the short 
>> record. 
>> That is all fine and well as long as we are not dealing with a multivolume 
>> data 
>> set. 
>> 
>> Think standalone dump written striped to  - say - 5 volumes. Each volume has 
>> a 
>> data set in format FBS, but only one of the volumes can have a short record. 
>> SAdump knows that, and IPCS knows it, too. The utilities don't. So assume 
>> that you took a complete sadump to 5 volumes and the sort record happens to 
>> be 
>> on the first volume. Then you use a utility (ICEGENER is my favourite) to 
>> copy 
>> somewhere else. You end up with a severely truncated sadump. One fifth, to 
>> be 
>> exact. IPCS will read the truncated dump to the best of its abilities, but 
>> you 
>> will get all kinds of 'storage not available' warnings when looking at 
>> the dump. 
>> 
>> Last time a customer sent me an sadump, it had 27000cyl. I got all kinds of 
>> warnings and got lucky in that the sadump messages were clearly truncated 
>> and 
>> didn't show the 'successfully finished' message. It turned out that 
>> the wrong utility was used for copying, and the actual dump had 63000 cyls. 
>> Visible when IPCS COPYDUMP was used for copying. IPCS knows that a striped 
>> sadump can have the short record "earlier". 
>> 
>> Barbara 
>> 
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