Format of GROUP DD

For entry analysis (EA), a special report section, called the transaction group report, can be produced. With this report you can get average statistics for groups of transactions. A special input file, called the GROUPS file, allows you to specify which transactions will be included in each group based on contents of the transaction input messages. This report is generated if there are valid records in the GROUPS file.

The GROUPS file is specified by the GROUPS DD job control statement in offline program JCL. This file, if specified, is a sequential file that contains 80-character fixed length records. The GROUPS file can be a cataloged data set or included in the job stream.

Each record in the GROUPS file includes a combination, or several combinations, of character strings, delimited by commas. Each character string delimited by a comma defines a group-specifier. All group-specifiers on a single 80-character record in the GROUPS file define a single transaction group. The records in the GROUPS file can also contain descriptive text for the group. The following rules are used to define the records of a GROUPS file:
  1. Each record must start with a comma.
  2. A single comma must appear at the end of each group-specifier in the record.
  3. Because the specifier delimiter is a comma, no group-specifier can contain a comma.
  4. There cannot be two consecutive commas in a record.
  5. The last comma that ends the last group-specifier must be followed by at least one blank.
  6. No group-specifier can be longer than 20 characters.
  7. If a WILDCARD option has been included in the OPTIONS DD file, the wildcard character can be used to define the group-specifiers. Any occurrence of the wildcard character in the group-specifier string can be matched by any single character in the input message.
  8. The list of group-specifiers in a record, including initial and final commas, but not including the blank after the final comma, cannot be greater than 31 characters.
  9. The group description begins with the first character after the blank that follows the comma of the last group-specifier. The description is 30 characters long and is padded with blanks on the right if necessary. If the group description contains more than 30 characters, only the first 30 will be used. There are no restrictions on the contents of the group description.

As the z/TPF software profiler offline program finds an input message in the z/TPF software profiler data run, it scans sequentially through the data from the GROUPS file until a group specifier is found that matches this message. That determines the transaction group that this transaction belongs to. Transactions that a match is not found for are part of a group defined as the OTHER/UNDEFINED group.

This example shows a sample GROUPS file and describes how the transactions would be selected into groups: 
,AG,AR,AY, This is the first group
,A, Other A transactions
,@G, This is the third group
,@@@@@ATL, The fourth group
Note: This example assumes that the following WILDCARD option was included in the OPTIONS file: 
WILDCARD @
This example of a GROUPS file would result in the following transaction groups:
  • Any transactions starting with the characters AG, AR, or AY, would be in the first group, which would be a group description of This is the first group.
  • Any transactions starting with A, other than the ones that already have been assigned to the first group, would be in the second group described as Other A transactions.
  • Because @ was specified as a wildcard character in the OPTIONS file, the third group would contain all transactions that have a G as their second character except for those that start with an AG and had been selected previously for the first group. The third group would have a group description of This is the third group.
  • The fourth group also uses wildcard characters and would contain all transactions that have ATL in the input message starting with the sixth character, excluding any transactions that had been selected previously. The fourth group would have a group description of The fourth group.
  • The fifth and final group would contain all transactions that were not selected and would have a group description of OTHER/UNDEFINED.