November 2013 – Rui Miguel Feio

Recent Articles

[ 19th October 2026 ] When AI Meets RACF: Can an Authorised Identity Become a Security Risk? RACF
[ 14th October 2026 ] AI Gone Wild: When Artificial Intelligence Stops Following the Rules Documentaries
[ 12th October 2026 ] The AI Systems Programmer: Is the Mainframe Skills Gap About to Change? Tech - AI
[ 5th October 2026 ] AI Sovereignty: Perhaps the Mainframe Had It Right All Along Tech - AI
[ 21st September 2026 ] AI on the Mainframe Is Moving from Experimentation to Production Tech - Mainframe

What is a VSAM Volume Data Set (VVDS)?

7th November 2013 Rui Miguel Feio

VVDS stands for VSAM Volume Data Set and it’s a VSAM file that contains the information of all VSAM and SMS-managed non-VSAM data sets that reside on the volume where the VVDS file is allocated. A VVDS is recognised by the restricted data set name SYS1.VVDS.Vvolser, where volser is the volume […]

Change Data Set SMS Information

2nd November 2013 Rui Miguel Feio

Sometimes we come across the need of changing the SMS information of a data set. The question of course is: how can we do it? Well, an easy way is to do it via batch job using the IDCAMS utility and the ALTER command: //SMSCHG EXEC PGM=IDCAMS //SYSPRINT DD SYSOUT=* […]

Choosing Between PADCHK And NOPADCHK Operands

1st November 2013 Rui Miguel Feio

When setting up program control protection in RACF via the PROGRAM general resource class, you have the option to specify if the profile is to be PADCHK or NOPADCHK. PADCHK This is the default. With PADCHK, RACF will check for Program-Accessed Data Sets (PADS) that are already open before executing […]