What is 'NAILDUMPS''?

I encountered a new term called 'NAILDUMPS' when I analysed a flowchart explaining a series of jcls.In some steps of that flowchart it is m开发者_如何学运维entioned as"this file is naildumped" .Can anyone explain what is a naildump and why it is used?.

Thanks in advance

In all my travels through the mainframe world, I've never heard this term, not with Fault Analyser (or its competition) or with system abend stuff, where you'd expect to find it.

Most likely thing is that it's an application specific thing. If you could provide the context around the comment in the JCL, such as a program name like IEBGENER or IEFBR14 (with the options), it may be easier to tell you what it's doing.

For what it's worth ^(a), there's one page that Google serves up showing one use for this elusive program. The link states that, to empty a dataset, you can use:

//STEP01   EXEC PGM=NAILDUMP                               
//FILE     DD DSN=your filename,DISP=SHR  

in your JCL. But given the scarcity of information on this program, the fact it doesn't seem to appear in any of the IBM z/OS docs and the fact that there are perfectly good supported ways of doing this, I'd still maintain that it's some in-house utility. Ask your local sysprogs - even if they don't know, they should be able to see inside the JCL member.

^(a) It's probably not worth much since there are all sorts of wonderful things you can do with JCL just by specifying DD commands, even with programs that do absolutely nothing, a la the infamous IEFBR14 program.

NAILDUMP is not a "normal" name for any standard IBM Mainframe (zos) utility program. This leaves three possibilities. NAILDUMP could be:

• a locally developed program, in which case you need to find the local documentation (good luck!).
• a catalogued procedure fronting a standard utility. For example, DFSORT is a catalogued procedure used in many shops to front the standard system sort program.
• an alias for another program. For example, ICEMAN is a commonly defined alias for the standard system sort program.

If you had access to the mainframe (or can find someone who does) the ISRDDN utility under TSO can be used to find the actual program load module that NAILDUMP relates to provided it is a locally developed program or is an alias for some other standard utility program. This link gives a brief explanation of how to do it.

If it is a catalogued procedure you can find it by searching for a member named NAILDUMP in the system default catalogued procedure library or those specified in the JCL.

Getting to the real name can be a bit of a challenge, but once you get there it should become clear what it is being used for through context.

It seems this a case when the author who made a document is very familiar with some term ( "naildump") but not to the audience of the document.

I think you should first ask the author for clarification because even if someone answers to you what it supposes to mean they could be wrong for that case in particular.

Given your little context makes a little sense that "NAILDUMP" empties the dataset or delete it.