More complex issues mean that the only way to replicate a problem or test a fix is to have some of the original input data. SMF and z/VM data (from the Monitor or from Velocity Software’s products) contains binary fields and complex structures, and while it is easy enough to transmit it using Precisely’s FTP facility, unless it is done carefully it is impossible to reconstitute it in a usable form.
If you have any questions about this process, contact Precisely Support for advice and assistance. It is as frustrating for us to receive data that cannot be used to help solve your problem as it is for you to have to repeat the data gathering and transmission.
Transmission of this complex data in a form that can be retrieved in a usable form from Precisely’s FTP site relies on the IBM “TERSE” utility, program named TRSMAIN or AMATERSE. This compresses data and packs it into 1024-byte fixed length records, perfect for transmitting across a network. Most systems have this available (ask your systems programmer), or if not can be quickly downloaded from IBM.
Tape Drive Restriction: If you are lucky enough to be using the Large Block Interface (LBI) with your tape drives, you can store data with block sizes of up to 256KB, but do not send us data with a blocksize greater than 32767. If necessary, reblock the selected data to a new dataset, then terse and send that.
If possible, limit the amount of data you send to just the record types needed by Acquire and limit the range of dates and times to the minimum that demonstrates the problem. This is not always possible, but if you can do this, it will reduce the preparation and transmission time for you, as well as the time for Precisely Support to reconstitute it on our system.
Do not TERSE Acquire output files directly on the mainframe if requested for diagnosis, as the files have to be uploaded to the Precisely mainframe, unTERSEd and downloaded again. Instead, download them to your PC converting from EBCDIC to ASCII – this will happen by default for most file transfer programs when the data is simple text. You can them zip them and they will compress to a much smaller size, possibly even suitable for emailing.