Utilities › TMSFORMT Utility—Format, Extend the TMC and Audit Data Set › Formatting a New TMC and Providing Optional Initial Information

Formatting a New TMC and Providing Optional Initial Information

See the discussion of TMSXTEND at the start of this section on TMSFORMT as well as the documentation on TMSXTEND later in this guide. TMSXTEND provides a simpler way to extend the TMC, however you must observe the restrictions associated with that utility. Some non-standard alphanumeric volume serial numbers cannot be processed by TMSXTEND.

Formatting the TMC establishes the hashing algorithm used to access the TMC records. It also establishes the values for various control variables in the TMC records. These control variables keep track of the number of Volume records and DSNBs.

When TMSFORMT is executed, a TMC record is built to provide information about each volume under CA 1 control. Data from existing catalogs can be converted to the proper format to provide initial information on the status and content of the volumes. The figure on Job Control Statements shows this process. See the TMSIDATA utility in the Release Summary for information on building a TMC from VSAM or system catalog listings.

The TMSCONVR utility can be executed to read a user-supplied data set and format the data into 340-byte records acceptable to TMSFORMT. Each input record must have a volume serial number to identify the TMC record to be updated along with the data set name. The next most critical field is the expiration date because it determines when a volume is available for scratch.

The TMSUPDTE utility can also be used after TMSFORMT to set fields such as TRTCH and TMDEN to the correct value when adding new ranges of cartridges that emulate one device type but physically are different.

During the construction of the TMC, you may be aware of future tape library expansion plans, so the volume serial number range or ranges of the new volumes may also be formatted. When TMC records are formatted for tape volumes that do not exist, they should be marked as inactive to suppress their appearance on reports.

Only new records or new record ranges can be marked as inactive using TMSFORMT (use TMSDELET to mark as inactive records that already exist).

CA strongly recommends that the TMC and Audit data sets be created and maintained as physical sequential unmovable data sets, data set organization of PSU (DSORG=PSU).

CA 1 can control volumes having volume serial numbers that are not six-digit numerics. To accommodate volume serial numbers that are not six digits, two exits have been provided in CA 1 to perform the required numeric translation. The translation scheme is specified at system installation and is used only for internal system processing. Externally, the alphanumeric volume serial number is used to reference the volume.

TMSXITU and TMSXITE, the two user exits which perform the translation, are used during the formatting of the TMC. The alphanumeric exit names are required to be specified on the parameter statement along with PARM=NEW.

• TMSXITU converts a nonnumeric volume serial number into a unique numeric volume serial number that is used internally by CA 1 to access the Volume record in the TMC. The version of TMSXITU in CAI.CTAPLINK must be the version that is executed. If a different version is executed through STEPLIB/JOBLIB, an error condition may occur.
• TMSXITE validates the TMSXITU conversion, converts the internal numeric VOLSER back to the installation standard nonnumeric VOLSER, and places the nonnumeric VOLSER into the TMC record so that the nonnumeric VOLSER can be used externally to reference the volume.

To test changes to TMSXITU and TMSXITE, STEPLIB to the changed modules and execute TMSFORMT with PARM=NEW against a preallocated TMC. If invalid conversions of TMC records are found, TMSFORMT will issue error messages indicating the discrepancy between the volume translated by TMSXITU and that translated by TMSXITE. Since TMSFORMT issues a LOAD for these two user exits, an IPL is not required, just a STEPLIB.

Notes:

• Alphanumeric exit names must be specified on the PARM statement along with a STEPLIB DD to test the alphanumeric exits.
• These exits may be LPA-resident. To use a different version of the exits, specify the appropriate load module library on the STEPLIB DD in the TMSFORMT JCL.

It is important to note that the control statements for TMSFORMT must express the internal range for alphanumeric volume serial numbers. For more information on the user exits, see the Programming Guide.