MERGECOPY

The MERGECOPY online utility merges copies or inline copies that other utilities produce. The COPY and COPYTOCOPY utilities produce image copies, and the LOAD and REORG utilities produce inline copies.

The utility can merge several incremental copies of a table space to make one incremental copy. It can also merge incremental copies with a full image copy to make a new full image copy. You cannot run MERGECOPY on concurrent copies or FlashCopy® image copies.

MERGECOPY operates on the image copy data sets of a table space, and not on the table space itself.

If you are creating copies in a JES3 environment, ensure that sufficient units are available to mount the required image copies. In a JES3 environment, if the number of image copies that are to be restored exceeds the number of available online and offline units, and if the MERGECOPY job successfully allocates all available units, the job waits for more units to become available.

Output

Output from the MERGECOPY utility consists of one of the following types of copies:
  • A new single incremental image copy
  • A new full image copy

You can create the new image copy for the local or recovery site.

Authorization required

To execute this utility, you must use a privilege set that includes one of the following authorities:

  • IMAGCOPY privilege for the database
  • DBADM, DBCTRL, or DBMAINT authority for the database. If the object on which the utility operates is in an implicitly created database, DBADM authority on the implicitly created database or DSNDB04 is required.
  • DATAACCESS authority
  • SYSCTRL or SYSADM authority

An ID with installation SYSOPR authority can also execute MERGECOPY, but only on a table space in the DSNDB01 or DSNDB06 database.

Restrictions on running MERGECOPY

  • MERGECOPY cannot merge image copies into a single incremental image copy for the other site, that is:
    • At local sites, you cannot use RECOVERYDDN with NEWCOPY NO.
    • At recovery sites, you cannot use COPYDDN with NEWCOPY NO.
  • When none of the keywords NEWCOPY, COPYDDN, or RECOVERYDDN is specified, the default, NEWCOPY NO COPYDDN(SYSCOPY), is valid for the local site only.
  • You cannot run MERGECOPY on concurrent copies.
  • You cannot run the MERGECOPY utility on the DSNDB01.DBD01, DSNDB01.SYSUTILX, DSNDB06.SYSTSCPY, or DSNDB01.SYSDBDXA table spaces, because you cannot make incremental copies of those table spaces.
  • MERGECOPY cannot be run on a table space during the period after RECOVER is run to a point in time before materialization of pending definition changes and before REORG is run to complete the point-in-time recovery process.

Execution phases of MERGECOPY

The MERGECOPY utility operates in these phases:

Phase
Description
UTILINIT
Performs initialization
MERGECOP
Merges incremental copies
UTILTERM
Performs cleanup