Profile modeling enables RACF® or an installation exit routine to copy information (such as the access list, owner, and logging options) from an existing (model) profile when defining a new profile. (The copied profile is not necessarily identical to the model profile. For a description of the differences, see Possible changes to copied profiles when modeling occurs.) This copying greatly reduces the effort needed to create new profiles. Some examples of using profile modeling are:

• A user can copy information from an existing profile into a new profile by using the FROM operand (and related operands) on the ADDSD or RDEFINE commands. RACF uses the specified profile as a model when creating the new profile. However, profile segment information (CICS®, DFP, DLFDATA, LANGUAGE, OPERPARM, SESSION, TSO, WORKATTR, and so on) is not copied to the new profile.
• A user can copy the access list from an existing profile into another existing profile using the FROM operand (and related operands) on the PERMIT command.
• For data sets, an installation can use automatic profile modeling. A user with the SPECIAL attribute can specify MODEL(USER), MODEL(GROUP), or MODEL(GDG) on the SETROPTS command. These operands specify that RACF is to use a model data set profile for selected users, groups, or GDG data sets.

  If the SETROPTS MODEL options are in effect, the MODEL operands of the ADDUSER, ADDGROUP, ALTUSER, and ALTGROUP commands specify the data set profile that is to be used as a model from which to copy information into new data set profiles.

  For more information on this topic, see Automatic profile modeling for data sets.

• If the preceding methods are not sufficient, an installation can also use a REQUEST=DEFINE exit routine to supply either the name of a model profile or the profile itself.