Asked by Anonymous - Mainframe JCL SYSABOUT and SYSPRINT: I am working a mainframe job z/os and alot f the JCL is just copied from older jobs, there is sysabout, sysprint, sysdbout, sysudump, and of course sysout.  There are others which look like they are internal to this shop as I cant even find info on it.  Are all these needed in todays JCL?   Thank you

Dan Says: I would get rid of some of them, you probably have alot of stuff not required if copying old JCL jobs and everyone does that because no one wants to write something new if you can just copy the old of course! I would keep these top 3 and get rid of others.  If your shop has internal defined then keep those also but thats different from shop to shop. SYSOUT - Obviously needed SYSPRINT - Keep it, source listings and offsets etc SYSUDUMP - Keep it, used by z/os for system abends and dumps. These probably arent needed but I bet you are seeing all of them.  I would remove these. ABENDAID - Some shops use this product but some also have it in JCL because they "used to have it" and just gets copied and carried forward. SYSTSPRT - Output of TSO commands in batch. SYSDBOUT - Used by older cobol compiler for SYMDMP but that was many years ago on OS/VM.  Most shops have upgraded systems and dont use this anymore, but if you do then yikes that system is really outdated. SYSABOUT - With the old cobol II programs this was used for abend dumps, most are using the new version cobol and new compilers not the old outdated stuff anymore. SYSABEND - Dumps contents of register variables, with stuff like IBM fault analyzer you probably dont need this anymore. Using good error displays and good error checking matters alot also.

Dan Says: Keep abendaid JCL entry of course if your shop uses that product.

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