Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!decwrl!ucbvax!APLVM.BITNET!KTRAN
From: KTRAN@APLVM.BITNET (Kha Tran)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.asm370
Subject: Getting VSAM attributes from assembler programs
Message-ID: <8912272230.AA29590@brazos.rice.edu>
Date: 27 Dec 89 22:11:27 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: IBM 370 Assembly Programming Discussion List <ASM370%UCF1VM.BITNET@ricevm1.rice.edu>
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Organization: The Internet
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Hello,

Can you tell me how to find the attributes of a VSAM cluster from an
assembler program?

For example, given the name of a VSAM cluster, how can you retrieve
information about the cluster (like LISTCAT provides) from
the ICF catalog?

I've done some research and found a tedious way to do it:
 1. Open the master catalog
 2. Find the user catalog in which the cluster is cataloged
 3. Open the user catalog
 4. Read the BCS sphere record belonging to the cluster
 5. Decode the BCS sphere record to find VVDS's containing information
    about the data/index components
 6. Open the VVDS's containing the data/index components
 7. Read the VVR's belonging to the data/index components
 8. Extract information in the VVR's

Is this way correct? Is there a better way?  How does LISTCAT do it?
Thank you for your help.

Kha Tran
The Johns Hopkins University
Applied Physics Laboratory