AMATERSE: Pack and unpack a data set

AMATERSE is a service aid program that operates in problem state. You can use AMATERSE to pack a data set before transmitting a copy to another site, typically employing FTP as the transmission mechanism. A complementary unpack service is provided to create a similar data set at the receiving site.

Note: IBM® also supports z/OS® Problem Documentation Upload Utility (PDUU), which is a utility that sends large amounts of documentation to IBM. AMATERSE is useful for compressing (packing) and unpacking relatively small amounts of service data, but is incompatible with PDUU (output and input), and offers no data transfer capability. For information about PDUU, see AMAPDUPL: Problem Documentation Upload Utility.

AMATERSE supports Direct Access Storage Device (DASD) and tape data sets:
  • Sequential data sets, which can be unpacked by VM TERSE.
  • Partitioned data sets (PDS), and partitioned data sets extended (PDSE) that do not contain program objects.
  • Large format (DSNTYPE=LARGE) data sets.
  • Fixed and variable, blocked and unblocked, spanned and unspanned record formats (RECFM) =F, FB, FBS, V, VB,VBS where the logical record length (LRECL) is less than 32K; and RECFM=VBS where the LRECL may be more than 32K but less than 64K.
  • Data sets with records containing ISO/ANSI or machine code printer control characters.
  • Placement of data sets into cylinder-managed space is also supported.