Thomas Berg wrote:

>Well, we just have to look at DFSORT as a programming language - with what 
>follows. OTOH, what it does it does very fast and efficient so it's worth the 
>effort to learn it IMHO.  
 
Indeed. Look at my JCL for SMF record 89 I posted sometime ago on IBM-MAIN.

In the past, I wrote Assembler programs to hande those packed fields 
(Date/Time/etc) and display it properly. Now I just distribute that 
ICETOOL/DFSORT JCL to whoever wants to quickly look at SMF records. 

Even auditors can understand that JCL. Simply explain each line using manuals 
and they're satisfied in 5 minutes.

About speed - that Assembler programs and DFSORT are running at same speed. 
Assembler program just select certain records, but DFSORT is the master when it 
comes to speed - Better I/O methods.
 
So, DFSORT (and ICETOOL) is actually a sort of ready built programming language 
tailored for fast sorting and reformatting data.

I still find it amazing that DFSORT can handle VB datasets and put results into 
a FB dataset. That alone enabled me to discard undocumented, but slow programs 
which do that same trick.

Groete / Greetings
Elardus Engelbrecht

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