SDSF
The tool for looking at what jobs are running, what has finished, and what output they produced.
Also written System Display and Search Facility
SDSF, or System Display and Search Facility, is where you go to see the state of work on the system. If you have submitted a job, SDSF is how you find out what happened to it.
It presents several lists. One shows jobs waiting to run, another jobs currently running, and another the output of jobs that have finished. From any of them you can open the output and read it, page through the messages, search for a string, and see the return code each step produced.
It also lets you act on work: cancel a job that is running away, purge output you have finished with, or change a job's priority if you have the authority.
The working loop is simple and it never changes. Write JCL, submit it, go to SDSF, read what came back, fix it, submit again. Most of the learning happens in that last step, reading the output carefully enough to understand what the system is telling you.
Related terms
- SpoolThe system-managed holding area where job output waits to be read, printed or purged.
- JobA unit of batch work submitted to the system, made up of one or more steps that run in order.
- SYSOUTOutput sent to the spool rather than to a dataset, where you can read it after the job finishes.
- Return codeA number a program leaves behind saying how it went. Zero for clean, higher numbers for warnings and failures.
- SubmitHanding JCL to the system to be run, which queues it as a job and gives it a job number.