JSF-Job and Syslog Facility 3.8 Release Notes

Released On: 08/06/1997

• Output may now be selected by msgclass or destination.
• If configured to do so by the administrator, JSF will bypass output that contains more than an administrator-configured number of lines. Bypassed output is routed to a msgclass when output selection is done by class. Bypassed output is routed to another destination when output selection is done by JES destination.
• JSF will bypass output which has a logical record length (LRECL) greater than 133, since it cannot properly archive it. Bypassed output is routed to a msgclass when output selection is done by class. Bypassed output is routed to another destination when output selection is done by JES destination.
• Options module parameters are displayed in the system log by the JSF started task at startup.
• In an attempt to keep JSF up, DYNALLOC failures on PSO (Process Sysout) datasets are now retried once before JSF is brought down.
• OS/390 compatibility/workaround changes were made. In an effort to allow JSF to run in sites with 4 digit years PRIOR to the completion of the true year2000-compatible JSF, options were added to configure locations of date fields within the options module (defaulted to pre-JSF 3.8 settings). For the same reasons, JSF now uses the updated version of the TIME macro, which may prohibit JSF from running on releases of MVS prior to 5.x. Since none of these pre-5.x versions will support 4 digit years, this is not seen as much of a hardship. As it is now the 2nd quarter of 1997 and less than 1000 days until it is our opinion that any prudent site is on MVS v5 by now.
• The VSAM purge program (JSFB0050) now runs above the line, is Y2K compliant and has a new purge criteria, AGE###. AGE### causes JSFB0050 to purge VSAM records which are older than ### days. Purging using a date parameter in the format YYDDD no longer works, instead YYYYDDD must be specified.
• Added ability to suppress the IEBCOPY compress of the JSF PDS during JSF's started task startup processing.
• Added ability to name the IEBCOPY program name used to compress the JSF PDS at startup. This was added so that users of products which replace IEBCOPY may still use the original IBM version of IEBCOPY to compress their files. Other IEBCOPY 'clones' don't always work properly.
• All screens were changed to mixed case to improved readability, some had minor changes made to improve clarity or functionality.
• Some minor maintenance was applied, including changes to JCL in the 2 purge jobs. It is recommended that these jobs are looked at carefully if you keep your existing jobs in production.
• An ISPF 4.1-based loadlib for the ISPF interface modules is now provided, as older ISPF 2.x-based modules do not work properly on the more current releases of ISPF.
• New code is included in the optional 'Requeue exit' (JSFB0032) that shows you how to issue a console action message when particular conditions are met.