The Legac-e Information Site

User ABENDS vs COND CODES

Opposite is the syntax for the Job Control Language (JCL) DISPosition operand of the DD statement.

It is the third positional element, abnormal termination status which helps define a potential advantage to exploiting User ABENDS rather than COND CODES.

Abnormal termination status

This option of the DISP operand indicates what is to happen to the data set if the program using it suffers an abnormal termination. As z/OS considers any COND CODE irrespective of value to be normal termination, this option is not used even if a non-zero COND CODE is issued.

This part of the DISP operand will come into play if an ABEND occurs and therefore a User ABEND may be preferable if the aim is to make the re-running of jobs easier.

Any scheduling package such as Tivoli Workload Scheduler (TWS, aka OPC), CONTROL-M or CA Despatch will know about the event and thus take appropriate action according to scheduling rules.