SMFD Control Statement Reference › SPLIT › Using Split Files Generated with the TIME Operand

Using Split Files Generated with the TIME Operand

To ensure that your data is processed effectively and correctly, review the following considerations and requirements when processing split files generated from SPLIT statements with the TIME operand.

Important! CA SMF Director is the owner of the GDG data set with relative generation 0 so it can keep adding records to it, if necessary. Since this generation 0 data set may not be complete, application code should not process or access it.

Older generations in the GDG are freely available for application use and can be processed by any programs or processes that consume the SMF records in the split file. These files can be accessed either via the relative generation number or by the fully qualified data set name that is in the split file index (or a duplicate copy of the index). CA SMF Director does not use the relative index to allocate these split files, so application JCL can be coded to use -1, -2, or any other negative relative value.

If a complete file must be processed immediately, such as a split file that must be processed soon after midnight, the TIMECLOSE operand can be used to ensure that the interval is closed if the SMF timestamp value passes the boundary of a split file. Traditional TIME-based split files will only switch to a new generation if an SMF record for that split file is archived during the dump process. By using TIMECLOSE, the file will be closed if any system SMF record is found to be in the next interval defined in the TIME operand.

For example, to generate a split file that contains a full day of RMF data and that would be available a few minutes past midnight, the following SPLIT statement could be coded:

SPLIT TODD(DAILYRMF) SID(PROD) TIME(0000) TIMECLOSE(YES) SELECT(70:79) TIMEGDG(SYS2.DAILYRMF) TIMEUNIT(SYSDA) TIMEFILL(YES).

If a switch command is issued soon after midnight (at about 12:05 a.m. for example), the dump process that runs will finish writing the previous day's generation in the SYS2.DAILYRMF.SIDPROD GDG and will allocate the current day's data set in the GDG. The RMF data for yesterday would be available by allocating this data set:

SYS2.DAILYRMF.SIDPROD(-1)

The job that processes this daily RMF file could be run every day without changing the JCL.

By setting TIMEFILL to YES, CA SMF Director will create a daily RMF file even on days when RMF data is not being recorded. This way the daily application that processes the RMF data can always use the -1 relative generation without there being a chance of processing the same data twice.