This article discusses support programs included in or available for OS/360 and successors. IBM categorizes some of these programs as utilities and others as service aids; the boundaries are not always consistent or obvious. Many, but not all, of these programs match the types in utility software. The following lists describe programs associated with OS/360 and successors. No DOS, TPF or VM utilities are included. History/Common JCL Many of these programs were designed by IBM users, through the group SHARE, and then modified or extended by IBM from versions originally written by a user. These programs are usually invoked via Job Control Language (JCL). They tend to use common JCL DD identifiers (in the OS, now z/OS operating systems) for their data sets: Dataset utilities IDCAMS 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. The following example illustrates the use of IDCAMS to copy a dataset to disk. The dataset has 80-byte records, and the system will choose the block size for the output: //XXXXXXXW JOB XXXXXXX,AAAA,CLASS=G,MSGCLASS=1,NOTIFY=&SYSUID //STEP001 EXEC PGM=IDCAMS //SYSIN DD * REPRO INFILE(FILE01) OUTFILE(FILE02) /* //FILE01 DD DSN=PROD.FILE1.INPUT,disp=shr ..... //FILE02 DD DSN=PROD.FILE2.OUTPUT, // DISP=(NEW,CATLG,DELETE), // UNIT=DASD, // SPACE=(TRK,(100,10),RLSE), // DCB=(RECFM=FB,BLKSIZE=0,LRECL=80) //SYSPRINT DD SYSOUT=* //SYSOUT DD SYSOUT=* //SYSUDUMP DD SYSOUT=* //* 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: //SYSIN DD DSN=PROD.MYFILE.REPRO,DISP=SHR or this: //SYSIN DD DSN=PROD.MYLIB.CNTLLIB(REPRO), // DISP=SHR IEBCOMPR 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). During processing, IEBCOMPR compares each record from each data set, one by one. If the records are unequal, IEBCOMPR lists the following information in the SYSOUT: The record and block numbers in question. The names