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Check out our collection of resources below for more information. http://search390.techtarget.com/featuredTopic/0,290042,sid10_gci761512,00.html -------------------------------------------------------------------- Welcome to Search390's Expert Question of the Week newsletter. Remember, no question is too simple for Ask the Experts! If you have a 390-related question, send it to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Selected questions will be answered by our experts. This week's question was answered by Jim Keohane, search390's Troubleshooting System 390 Expert. THIS WEEK'S QUESTION: Q: I need to capture the last referenced date, time of a physical sequential file in order to allocate and FTP a 0 byte new file with timestamp as a node as delivery notification to an ip address. The file which needs to checked for last change is changed by an ftp pgm. A: OS/390 does keep a "last referenced" date, but not time, for sequential datasets in the format 1 DSCB. You said the dataset is last "changed" by FTP. Last referenced date is not same as last referenced date. If dataset was last changed Monday but the next day some program or user later read or browsed that dataset it's last referenced date would be Tuesday. It sounds like you wish only the last date/time the dataset was modified by FTP. If FTP deleted old dataset and then allocated and wrote to new dataset then the creation date would be more accurate than referenced date but you would still not have the time. Various SMF records are optionally written by FTP and by underlying OS/390 access routines. One of them would probably contain enough info to see a dataset of a specific name written to and closed by a program named FTP or whatever. The SMF record would also contain a date and time that should be awfully close to what you want. The problem here, of course, is getting easy and timely access to these SMF records. Every shop has their own procedures so it would be fruitless for me to make suggestions without knowing more. There are also FTP user exits. There should a user exit in OS/390 server to record or capture date/time of last write to specific dataset(s). The exit could log that info somewhere that another program could interrogate later and do the FTP of 0-byte file you use as notification. I wrote the code in IBM's older FTP client and server for SMF records. There was also a user exit that was awoken when SMF record was to be written. You could turn on SMF within FTP, have your exit log the event and then return to FTP saying to SKIP writing of SMF record. That is, if my memory hasn't failed me and that current IBM FTP client/server have a similar capability. Hmmmm, there are RACF/ACF2/TSS exits that are awaken when a file is opened for output and/or when a file is allocated DISP=OLD or NEW (or MOD if pre-existing?). Hope this gives you enough ideas. 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