Why does the OV-area fill up when my LDS has plenty of space? And what can I do if the OV-area is full?

Products

• Dispatch Output Mgmt

Issue/Introduction

The OV-area is an IDMS database file that contains pointers into the LDS for the recipients of reports that are sent into online viewing. There is (roughly) one pointer entry in the OV-area for every 25 pages of report data. And, each recipient of the report has their own pointers being stored in the OV-area.

So, if a report had 1000 pages of data and only one recipient, it would take up 40 pointers.

However if that same 1000 page report had 20 recipients, then the report would take up 800 pointers in the OV-area. Keep in mind that the 1000 page report is only being stored in the LDS files 1 time only.

If you have very large reports that also have many recipients, you can see where the OV-area can become full even though the LDS files themselves may not be full.

Resolution

When the OV file becomes full, it is usually indicated by receipt of a "DC980212 Error Status - 1211" error message that can be seen in the Dispatch logs and that points to any of the OV-????? areas within the OV database file.  

The procedures to migrate to a larger size OV-area are documented in the System Programmer Guide, chapter 6, entitled "Migrating the Report Distribution Database". Should the situation arise where you have to increase the size of the OV-area, make sure your read this entire chapter. The process used to increase the size of a database file is a multi-step process where the ending steps are documented at the END of chapter 6. Typically, this size increase migration process is something that has to be scheduled during off hours.

In the event your OV file becomes full and you need to make room in the OV-area until you can schedule a migration to a larger size, you can use the online viewing PAGES command to find large reports and/or MSGCLASS entries and delete them out of online viewing.

To identify all reports with at least 500 pages, go to the VOVMI010 View Report Selection screen (via options B.1 from the main menu) and type PAGES 500 in the command line. This same PAGES command can be issued on the VOVMI200 MSGCLASS Job Selection Screen.

When the PAGES command is issued, your display will be limited and you will only see reports with 500 or more pages.

The syntax is PAGES nnnnn  (Where nnnnn sets the desired page limit).

Once you have identified large report entries, you might then want to determine how many recipients each report has so that when you manually DELETE the entry, you get the most "bang for your buck" in terms of freeing up space in the OV- area.

To determine how many recipients a report has, you can submit the CADSJCL library job DSEXCULP with the MEMBER symbolic set as MEMBER=DSCULP01 and this will produce a listing showing you the reports defined to Dispatch and the RECIPIENTS defined for each report. From this listing you can determine how many recipients a report has.

You may find that archiving or deleting a few large reports that have many recipients will make enough room in the OV-area to allow you to continue running until a migration of the OV-area to a larger size can be scheduled for off hours.