System variables substitution in parameter library members

Some BMC AMI Ops Automation BBPARM members support system variables substitution. (Refer to the following table for a brief description of each BBPARM member.) With symbolic substitution, you can reduce the number of parameter libraries that you maintain. When the member is read, the value of the symbol is substituted for the symbol. The symbol must begin with an ampersand, followed by one to eight characters, and can optionally end with a period. You can define your own symbols by placing them in the IBM PARMLIB member IEASYMxx.

Related topic

BBPARM-data-set-members-for-BMC-AMI-Ops-Automation

 

Symbolic names can be concatenated as a string, and names can be added at the beginning, middle or end of the string. See the following example:

Example
DSN=VAM3.&SYSPLEX..&SYSNAME..OFFLOAD

If &SYSPLEX=BMC1 and &SYSNAME=SJSD, the preceding string converts to

DSN=VAM3.BMC1.SJSD.OFFLOAD

Important

A period at the end of a symbolic name is assumed to be a delimiter and is omitted in the conversion. If you want to generate the string BMC1SJSD, you would code &SYSPLEX&SYSNAME.

For more information about symbolic substitution, see "System Symbols and Symbolic Substitution" in the IBM documentation Initialization and Tuning Reference.

You can control substitution on a member-by-member basis by adding a control card (a PROCESS statement) at the beginning of each member. The PROCESS statement is described in  the following table.

Control Card

Description

PROCESS [SYM=YES|NO,][LIST=YES|NO|PAR]

Indicates whether system variables substitution is allowed

When present, the PROCESS statement must be the first statement in the member and must begin in column 1. Possible keywords are as follows

  • SYM= YES|NO
    • YES is the default and indicates that symbols are replaced by their value if the calling program has enabled symbol substitution.
    • NO indicates that symbolic substitution is suppressed for this member, even if the calling program has enabled substitution.

Only the first character (Y or N) needs be specified.

Substitution is not performed on comments or any data beyond column 71.

  • LIST

    The LIST keyword indicates whether the contents of the member being processed (all statements following the PROCESS statement) are written to the job log, one statement at a time, as the member is read. The following described valid values for the LIST keyword:
     

    • Specifying YES causes the entire contents of the member (except the PROCESS statement) to be written to the job log.
      If substitution is performed, two WTO messages are displayed for each statement where substitution is performed. The first message contains the statement with the symbol, and the second message contains the same statement with the substituted value of the symbol. The second statement is also prefixed with < > to indicate that the statement is modified.
       
    • Specifying NO (default) causes processing to not write the contents of this member to the job log and they are not displayed as WTO messages
       
    • Specifying PAR causes processing to filter out any commented out statements in the member and displays only the parameters in the job log.

You can use the Dynamic Parameter Manager (DPM) to display and alter specific parameters in members AAOEXPxx, AAOALSxx, AAOARPxx, and AAOTSPxx. For more information about DPM, see Continuous-operation-with-dynamic-parameter-management.

 

 

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