Identifying address spaces

The descriptions of those services use the term asi (address space instance) to identify the target address space. You can identify the target address space several ways, by

• 'at sign' character (@) to reference your address space
• asterisk (*) to indicate the previously referenced address space
• jobname, started task ID, fully-qualified name or TSO USERID
• ASID expressed as a decimal value by enclosing it in parentheses, such as (123)
• ASID expressed as a hexadecimal value by preceding the value with an X and enclosing it in parentheses; for example, (X123), which is equivalent to (291)
• job instance token ( JIT)

Note that work on a system is dynamic; jobs continuously terminate and start in the same address space and occasionally the jobs use the same name. Also, the operating system supports concurrent execution of multiple started tasks with the same job name but with different started task identifiers. Therefore, it is important to ensure that you are referencing the correct job instance.

To make this task easier, BMC AMI Ops SYSPROG Services supports the use of a started task ID and most services accept a fully-qualified name. A fully-qualified name consists of a jobname and a started task ID (separated by a period) in the form jobName.startedTaskID. You can also enter only the jobname or the started task ID. You must prefix the started task ID with a period (.), which indicates that this is an ID and not a jobname. For example, .JES2 refers to the started task with an ID of JES2.

To ensure that you are referring to the same job instance each time you execute a service, you can use the JITOKEN service to obtain a unique token for the job instance and then use the token it provides in place of the jobname on subsequent services.

The SYSPROG Services JITOKEN service, if given any of the elements in the above list, returns a token that uniquely identifies the job instance. Using a job instance token ensures that a requested action will not be taken against a different job instance with the same job name or ASID. After the job instance terminates, the token is invalid and will be rejected by any service.

When you use an asterisk (*) to indicate the last-referenced address space, the job instance token of the last-referenced address space is substituted. When services are invoked from a row representing an address space in a BMC AMI Ops view, the job instance token is used to identify the target address space.

For more information, see JITOKEN.