Assure Client on the mainframe to capture a file into an Assure layout

The sections below cover how to setup an Assure layout to receive data from an Assure Client mainframe installation and how to setup the JCL to connect a file and trigger an Assure control.

This article assumes that Assure client z/OS installation is complete. Depending on your mainframe TLS settings and network requirements, you may also need to override TLS 1.2 within Assure client.

How to set up the layout on the Assure Server

Name: Specify a name for this file and its data.

Type: Fixed files contain fixed-length data fields, but may contain records of varying lengths.

Record Length: For fixed-length records, specify the length of the record, in bytes. For files containing records of varying lengths, specify the minimum record length.

Max Record Length: For files containing records of varying lengths, specify the maximum record length, in bytes.

Data Access Method: Select the access method for this file  "Record I/O" & Record Ending = "Native z/OS I/O".   

Field Encodings - Limit to Characters, Leave this option unchecked to process the underlying data as a sequence of bytes, and those bytes may contain non-text data such as binary or packed decimal data. Check this option if all fields to be mapped are text, and the underlying data stream may contain multi-byte sequences to define characters.

Defines Multiple Record Types: Select this option if the file has more than one type of logical record. Selecting this option enables you to add multiple record types on the Fields tab.

Record Ending: select "Native z/OS I/O"—for files that use native JZOS or JRIO routines on z/OS.

Character Set: Specify the character set of the file if it as "EBCDIC".

Binary Byte Order: Indicate the method used to store data in this data source. 

Path/URL: The path/URL should be something like this : \\DD:SAMPLEDD, where SAMPLEDD matches the DD in your JCL.

Security Profile: Specify the security profile to associate with this layout. Click the icon to select the profile from a list of existing profiles. The security profile determines the permissions for this layout. The system displays this field only for a rules writer with a security manager or security administrator authority.

Queue Factory: This can be left as blank

How to set up the JCL to trigger a job with a local input source

•  Define the Path in the rule as a "DD name" with something like "//DD:MYFILE".
  The filename in the JCL and the layout is exactly the same and the file should exist.        

JCL Example:                 

//MAINARGS DD *
 - entity 'TEST CE'
 - point TEST CP
 - local
//MYFILE DD DSN=UJKO.TEST.GYTW.TEST.COPY.UT,DISP=SHR2

• We need to use DD name and specify the DSN in JCL, then the JCL execution will check its existence, and we can better control the disposition of the dataset (like using DISP=SHR).
•  Running from JCL with local options. When you specify //DD: what is after the colon should be a DD name, The  path/URL should be something like this :  \\DD:MYFILE,
• In the above JCL example, since have a DD name in the JCL called MYFILE. Set the Layout's path/URL to \\DD:MYFILE.
• Mainframes don't use ASCII as their character set, they use EBCDIC.