IBM mainframe utility programs

IBM mainframe utility programs are Utility software supplied with IBM mainframe operating systems such as MVS to carry out various tasks associated with datasets, etc.

The following list describes utilities distributed with OS/360 and successors. No VSE or VM utilities are included.

Many of these utilities were designed by IBM users, through the group SHARE, and then modified or extended by IBM from versions originally written by a user.

These utilities are usually invoked via Job Control Language (JCL). They tend to use common JCL DD identifiers for their data sets:

IDCAMS ("Access Method Services") generates and modifies Virtual Storage Access Method (VSAM) and Non-VSAM datasets. IDCAMS was introduced along with VSAM in OS/VS; the "Access Method" reference derives from the initial "VSAM replaces all other access methods" mindset of OS/VS. IDCAMS probably has the most functionality of all the utility programs, performing many functions, for both VSAM and non-VSAM files.

Example:

In the example above, SYSIN control cards are coming from an in-stream file, but you can instead point to any sequential file or a PDS member containing control cards or a temporary data-set, if you wish. Example of using SYSIN files would be something like this:

or this:

IEBCOMPR compares records in sequential or partitioned data sets.

The IEBCOMPR utility is used to compare two sequential or partitioned datasets. This data set comparison is performed at the logical record level. Therefore, IEBCOMPR is commonly used to verify that a backup copy of a data set is correct (exact match to the original).

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