Using the RCDS utility to export your RCDS

The CICS® VR RCDS contains recovery information required by the CICS VR panel interface to construct a recovery job.

Invoking the RCDS utility with the EXPORT keyword specified extracts recovery information from the RCDS related to VSAM spheres, update activity, and MVS™ log streams and log stream copies. This information is essential to create a forward recovery job for VSAM spheres at a remote recovery site using the CICS VR panel interface. Optionally, you can specify keywords CA and BACKUP on the RCDS EXPORT command to extract information related to change accumulation and backups respectively from the RCDS.
Note: Note: If you export information related to change accumulation and backups from the RCDS, you must also send the actual change accumulation data sets and backups to the remote recovery site. Catalog the change accumulation data sets and backups prior to invoking any CICS VR utility at the remote recovery site.

The information extracted by CICS VR, when the RCDS command with the EXPORT keyword is run, is copied into the SAM data set that is specified on the DWWCOPY1 DD statement. The sample RCDS EXPORT job below creates a SAM data set with recovery information that can be sent to your remote site.

Figure 1. Sample RCDS EXPORT job to copy the RCDS for the remote recovery site
 //RCDSEX1 JOB ACCOUNTING INFORMATION,REGION=0M                 01 
 //EXPORT   EXEC PGM=DWWGJCDS                                   02 
 //STEPLIB  DD   DSN=DWW.SDWWLOAD,DISP=SHR                      03 
 // DD DSN=DWW.SDWWLENU,DISP=SHR
 //DWWCOPY1 DD   DSN=USER1.DWWCOPYR,                            04 
 //              UNIT=3590,VOL=SER=TAPE04,                      05 
 //              LABEL=(1,SL),DISP=(NEW,KEEP)                   06 
 //DWWCON1  DD   DSN=DWW.DWWCON1,DISP=SHR                       07 
 //DWWCON2  DD   DSN=DWW.DWWCON2,DISP=SHR                       08 
 //DWWCON3  DD   DSN=DWW.DWWCON3,DISP=SHR                       09 
 //DWWMSG   DD   SYSOUT=*                                       10 
 //DWWPRINT DD   SYSOUT=*                                       11 
 //DWWIN    DD   *                                              12 
            RCDS EXPORT                                         13 
 /*                                                                
 //                                                                

Here is a description of each of the numbered statements:

Line
Explanation
01
JOB statement defines a CICS VR job
02
EXEC statement defines a CICS VR job step. Specifies that program DWWGJCDS is to be run. The prefix DWW always refers to a component of CICS VR.
03
STEPLIB DD statement. Specifies the name of the CICS VR load library, for example, DWW.SDWWLOAD, used for this job step.
04–06
DWWCOPY1 DD statement. Specifies the SAM data set, USER1.DWWCOPYR, in which the EXPORTed RCDS information is stored. USER1.DWWCOPYR is allocated on a standard label 3590 volume TAPE04 and kept.
07–09
DWWCON1–DWWCON3 defines the three recovery control data sets. If you are running the CICS VR server, you must use the hlq.slq that was defined in the IGDSMSxx PARMLIB member for these data sets. Pertinent information from these data sets is copied into the data set that is specified on the DWWCOPY1 DD statement.
Note: CICS VR uses three identical RCDS data sets to provide fault tolerance and improved reliability.
10
DWWMSG defines the output data set that contains the CICS VR messages. This is usually defined as a SYSOUT data set.

The DCB parameters for this data set are RECFM=FBA and LRECL=133. The block size can be provided on the DWWMSG DD statement and must be a multiple of 133. The default is 27930.

11
DWWPRINT defines the output data set that contains the reports produced by CICS VR. This is usually defined as a SYSOUT data set.

The DCB parameters for this data set are RECFM=FBA and LRECL=133. The block size can be provided on the DWWPRINT DD statement and must be a multiple of 133. The default is 27930.

12
DWWIN DD statement. Specifies the data set that contains the CICS VR commands. You can either specify a sequential data set with 80-byte, fixed-length records, or include the CICS VR commands in-stream, as shown.
13
RCDS EXPORT command. Specifies that all the necessary RCDS information is copied to the USER1.DWWCOPYR data set.