The manual says the DCB of the OM VIEW backup tapes is different than when using CA1 dialog

Products

• View

Issue/Introduction

The manual says the DCB of the VIEW backup tapes is: - RECFM=VB LRECL=32756 BLKSIZE=32760. However, via CA1 dialog, the DCB shows as RECFM=U,LRECL=0,BLKSIZE=0. Why is this?

Environment

• View®
• OM View for z
• Output Management View® for z/OS

Resolution

The DCB is RECFM=VB, LRECL=32756, BLKSIZE=32760

View has its own internal tape architecture and does not populate the IBM control blocks in a traditional manner. Tape management systems may or may not show correct data depending on the fields they retrieve. Block count for example should be populated but even then some systems do not know we added additional blocks at the end of an existing tape.

View does not use QSAM or BSAM to write to tape. Instead, it uses EXCP processing and creates its own CCW chain.

Blksize and Lrecl are not needed.