messages from sort when saving an element

Products

• Endevor
• Endevor Natural Integration
• Endevor - ECLIPSE Plugin
• Endevor - Enterprise Workbench

Issue/Introduction

Why does user get a bunch of messages coming from sort package when updating an element into endevor?

For example:
ICE201I A RECORD TYPE IS V - DATA STARTS IN POSITION 5
ICE143I 0 BLOCKSET SORT TECHNIQUE SELECTED
ICE250I 0 VISIT http://www.ibm.com/storage/dfsort FOR DFSORT PAPERS, EXAMPLES A
D MORE

Environment

Release:
Component: ENDBAS

Resolution

This may happen for element types defined with forward or reverse delta format if the element is very large and the new version introduces a lot of changes.

In this situation, Endevor may run out of storage when comparing the new version of the element with the current version in order to create the new delta level. If that happens, Endevor swaps to a less demanding method which involves invoking the SORT package.

To ascertain we are in this case, we can see whether the SORT statement is in the form:
SORT FIELDS=(00012,04000,CH,A,11,2,CH,A,5,4,CH,A)

Normally, these messages should not print to the screen. SORT utility prints them to ddname SYSOUT which endevor allocates to DUMMY in order to suppress them.

However, if the TSO session has the ddname SYSOUT already allocated to the terminal (as in TSO ALLOC FI(SYSOUT) DA(*)) they will print to the TSO terminal.

SYSOUT DD might be allocated to the terminal, for example, if user needs to see messages from user exits printed via COBOL DISPLAY verb which print to SYSOUT DD