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Exploiting the System Sort Utility

Copying Datasets

Probably the best dataset copy utility available to you will be your system SORT utility. A lot of effort is put into tuning the CPU and I/O performance of the SORT and it will normally perform very well as a copy utility. Most types of dataset formats will be supported; refer to the documentation for your SORT product for any restrictions.

The SORT utility is also capable of producing multiple copies or even extracting multiple subsets of the same input dataset in a single pass.

Simple Data Analysis

The SORT utility can also be used to

identify records with duplicate keys
count the number of unique key values
perform simple tabular reports

for one or more specified fields.

Loading VSAM Keyed Datasets

Since SORT can output to VSAM datasets and keyed datasets can be loaded more efficiently when sorted by the key value, why not use SORT when loading VSAM keyed datasets?

Useful Reference Sites

DFSORT's home page - loaded with examples, online documentation and helpful hints. If you don't see the answer to your question, you can ask!

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