Tips and best practices

There are some tips to run the IMS Recovery Solution Pack smoothly.

Dynamic allocation of RECONs

To ensure that IMS Database Recovery Facility recovers the correct set of data, use dynamic allocation of RECONs as opposed to explicitly specifying the RECON data sets in the IMS Database Recovery Facility JCL and procedures.

RACF® authority

If insufficient authority was granted to the user ID that submits the IMS Database Recovery Facility job, RACF permission failures can occur when data sets are created and accessed.

These data sets are required by IMS Database Recovery Facility to perform recovery in the master address space and all subordinate address spaces, including the utility address space for IMS Index Builder (IB UAS). The IB UAS can initiate one or more sort subordinate address spaces (IBSS).

In addition, when specifying the DRFHLQ= option in the REPORT() parameter, confirm with your system administrator that the 1- to 8-character high-level qualifier has the proper authority to allocate and catalog IMS Database Recovery Facility report data sets on your system.

Hard coding JCL statements for databases that are being recovered

The IMS Database Recovery Facility master address space JCL cannot contain any hard-coded database data sets. This restriction applies to any step in the JCL, regardless of the usage.

Because IMS Database Recovery Facility dynamically allocates the database data sets for recovery in the subordinate address space, dynamic allocation will fail if any of the subsequent steps have these same data sets allocated by DD statements in the MAS.

This restriction is a z/OS® restriction.