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About usModule 6: JCL Utilities
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Utilities, an Overview
Utilities can be considered as a useful tool in mainframe, which can be helpful to system programmer or application developers while they code system or application features. In general, utilities are pre-written programs supplied by MVS that can be used in our JCL to accomplish most popular tasks such as copy PS or PDS files, renaming/compressing/comparing dataset etc. These utilities can only be used in JCL.
There are lot of utilities provided by MVS but below are most popular utilities:-
| Utility Name | Purpose |
|---|---|
| IEBGENER | Used to copy sequential data sets, a member of partitioned data set or PDSE(Partitioned data set extended) |
| IEBCOPY | Used to copy selected (or all) members from one to another PDS (partitioned data sets). It can also be used to compress PDS to recover lost space. |
| IEHPROGM | Used to catalog/uncatalog/rename dataset. It can also be used to create Generation Data Groups(GDG) |
| IEBCOMPR | Used to compare two PS or PDS datasets |
| IEFBR14 | It is dummy utility and used to allocate/delete datasets |
| IDCAMS | Mostly used to manage GDGs and VSAM datasets. |
| IEBEDIT | Used to selectively copy the steps from a JCL |
| IEHINIT | Used to initialize a tape |
| IEHLIST | Used to list the entries in the catalog |
| IEHMOVE | Used to move one dataset from one volume to another volume |