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Status Future consideration
Created by Guest
Created on May 27, 2025

Simple Code Generation As Part Of Job Tailoring

We need a feature to generate a codeblock based on variables inside a JCL variable table several times (like dot-function of ISPF File Tailoring) inside of jcl. Therefore, I propose to extend the action-jcl directive or even a new TWS JCL directive:

Hint: Linebreaks gets lost by saving this ideas.

Let's just assume to extend begin-action by action=template:

//*%OPC BEGIN ACTION=TEMPLATE,NAME=(MYNAME)
//*
//DD&KEY. DD DISP=SHR,DSN=&VALUE.
//*%OPC END ACTION=TEMPLATE

The code block included in the action-statements shall be repeated for each variable inside of the variable table MYNAME. The Variable name and value needs to be accessible in some variables (implizit variables) to insert them in the code.

For table myname, containing 3 variables:

VAR1 = MY.DATASET.V1
VAR2 = MY.DATASET.V2
VAR3 = MY.DATASET.V3

the above example should result in:

//*>OPC BEGIN ACTION=TEMPLATE,NAME=(MYNAME)  
//DDVAR1 DD DISP=SHR,DSN=MY.DATASET.V1
//DDVAR2 DD DISP=SHR,DSN=MY.DATASET.V2
//DDVAR3 DD DISP=SHR,DSN=MY.DATASET.V3
//*>OPC END ACTION=TEMPLATE

Additional to that, all other job tailoring directives has to be in effect inside of the template block and will be executed after finishing the template action.

For a better way to split configuration to single places, the name statement should be able to read more than one variable tables (like SEARCH NAME), including the keywords APPL (variable table placed at occurence level) and GLOBAL (global variable table).

For a better way of control, filters for filtering variable names and variable values are needed. I propose the usage of ISPF-like filters with * (any amount characters) and % (exact one character). But with the opportunity to use placeholder even at the beginning of a filter (e.g. *AR1).
Filters have to support equal and not-equal operators and need to be conquatinated with the OR operator.

A possible syntax can look like this:

//*%OPC BEGIN ACTION=TEMPLATING,NAME=(MYNAME,GLOBAL),FILTER=((NAME.EQ.VAR*),(VALUE.EQ.'HLQF.*')),PHASE=SETUP
Idea priority High