Tape management systems

Although FATS has no formal interface to any tape management system, it is designed to be compatible with them. FATS takes the following actions for the benefit of tape management systems:

  • Tapes will always be opened with the label type indicated in the JCL (unless the FATS BLP operand is used). If tapes are opened as labeled, the tape management system knows the volume serial of the tape and can approve or disapprove its use. If they are opened as unlabeled, an operator response may be required to provide the volume serial for the tape management system.
  • When tapes are opened for output (certification, labeling or erasure), the expiration date of the data set will be set to the current date, so that the data set will be immediately available as a scratch tape.
  • If labels are written on the tape, the data set name will be the name given in the JCL for the tape, unless EXPDT=98000 is given when a data set name of 17 0 s is used. Some tape management systems will not allow a tape to be used as scratch if the name in the tape labels is different from the name recorded in its database, unless the name is 17 0 s indicating it has been initialized.

Most tape management systems provide the ability to bypass their operation on a particular TAPE DD statement. In many cases, EXPDT=98000 in the JCL is used for this bypass; check your tape management documentation to be sure. This may be required for certain operations with FATS. For example, if multiple volumes are being verified (read) by FATS, and their data set names differ, FATS will open them all with the data set name on the TAPE DD statement; this may fail unless the tape management system is bypassed.

Note: the companion products FATAR and FATSCOPY have tape management system interfaces with IBM’s RMM, BMC’s Control-M/Tape, CA Technologies’ CA 1 and TLMS, and ASG’s Zara.







 

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