Using Access Method Services

Access method services (AMS) is a utility you can use to establish and maintain catalogs and data sets. The Storage Management Subsystem (SMS) and its classes, in conjunction with the automatic class selection (ACS) routines, automate many access method services commands and their specified parameters. However, if your storage administrator has not established these routines, you can construct and execute them manually. You can find these commands and parameters in this book.

IDCAMS is the program name for access method services (AMS).

There are two types of access method services commands: Functional commands, which you use to define data sets or list catalogs; and modal commands, which you use to specify the conditional execution of functional commands. If you are a time sharing option (TSO/E) user, you are restricted to using only the functional commands. For detailed information about these commands, their parameters and subparameters, refer to the subsequent chapters in this book.

Use this book as a reference only. It is not a complete source of information about access method services. For more information about access method services tasks, refer to z/OS DFSMS Managing Catalogs and z/OS DFSMS Using Data Sets. To find out more about SMS, its keywords, the ACS routines and requirements, see z/OS DFSMS Introduction.