Message groups and subgroups

Message Groups

A message group contains two or more messages that are displayed together in response to a specific command or error condition. The following example is a message group.

IST1188I  VTAM level STARTED AT time ON date
IST1349I  COMPONENT ID IS dddd-ddddd-ddd
IST1348I  VTAM STARTED AS nodetype
IST1189I  option = current_value [option = current_value]
⋮
IST314I  END

In most cases, the "Explanation" section of the first message in the group contains an example of the group and information about all messages in the group. The message descriptions of members of the group refer back to the first message for complete information.

Message groups that are in response to DISPLAY commands are an exception. For these groups, each individual message in the group usually contains a complete message description. See z/OS Communications Server: SNA Operation for examples of these types of groups.

Message Subgroups

A message subgroup contains two or more messages that are displayed together in response to a specific command or error condition. The major differences between a group and a subgroup are that a subgroup is always displayed in a larger group, and one message in the subgroup is always displayed with the other.

Some subgroups are optional parts of the group, and this is indicated by the use of brackets at the beginning and end of the subgroup. Subgroups can also be repeated, and this is indicated by three vertical dots following the last message in the subgroup.

The following example contains several message subgroups.

IST951I   DISPLAY DISK INFORMATION FOR ncpname
[IST957I  NO NCP LOAD MODULE OR DUMP ON DISK]
[IST952I  DUMP NAME     DATE      TIME
IST953I   dumpname      date      time]
⋮
[IST954I  LOAD MODULE   DATE     TIME   STORE STATUS  [ACTIVE]
IST955I   loadmodname   date     time
status     [YES|NO]]
⋮
[IST924I  -------------------------------------------------------]
[IST1065I LOAD MODULE  REQUESTED IPL  ESTIMATED IPL
IST1066I  load_module  requested_time
estimated_time]
⋮
IST965I   AUTO DUMP/LOAD:  {YES|NO}
IST314I   END

In this example, the following three subgroups exist in the group headed by IST951I:

IST952I and IST953I
IST954I and IST955I
IST1065I and IST1066I

These subgroups are always displayed in the larger IST951I group.