Sending an IODF to a different location

There may be situations, in which an IODF is to be transferred to a different location or system. Usually, the HCD Export/Import Utility can be used to transmit the IODF to the desired target destination. Sometimes, however, there are situations, where this may not be possible (e.g. a direct connection does not exist). The following steps describe a simple method in which you can transfer your IODF data from one z/OS host to any other z/OS host even if a direct transmission path not available.

1. Examine the size of the IODF, which is to be transferred. Check for the number of allocated 4K blocks in the HCD dialog: Maintain I/O definition files ---> View I/O definition file information.
2. Use the HCD Export function, found under the HCD dialog Define, modify, or view configuration data, Export I/O definition file in the HCD dialog. Send the IODF to your own user ID; that is, to the user ID of the host on which you are currently working. HCD will export the IODF data as a sequential data set to your own user ID. If you specify an asterisk (*) for the target user ID and target node ID, the sequential data set is not transmitted but rather written directly to the data set user.EXPORTED.IODFnn.xxxx. In this case, you can skip step 4.
3. Exit the HCD dialog.
4. Use the TSO RECEIVE command to retrieve the IODF data from your internal reader. Per default, you will get a sequential data set user.EXPORTED.IODFnn.xxxx. This data set has the record organization FB and LRECL=BLKSIZE=4096 and the number of blocks as mentioned under step 1).
5. Download this data set to your workstation. It is important that you ensure that the download is in binary mode.
6. To save storage resources, you may consider compressing (zipping) the downloaded file on the workstation.
7. Now you can transfer the IODF to a different workstation/location. Once the IODF data has arrived at the target workstation, you have to uncompress (unzip) the file if it has been compressed for transportation.
8. On the target z/OS host pre-allocate a data set into which the IODF data is to be uploaded. It must be a sequential data set with FB, BLKSIZE=LRECL=4096 and the number of blocks must be the number of allocated blocks of the original IODF (see step 1).
9. Upload the IODF data from the workstation to the z/OS host in binary mode into the pre-allocated sequential data set.
10. Use the HCD Import function, found under the HCD dialog Define, modify, or view configuration data, Import I/O definition file and specify the sequential data set to be imported into an IODF data set using the name of your choice.