Now that you are running or preparing to run V5R4, don’t forget the goodies. V5R4 provides a native capability to save and restore spooled files. Previously, you had to build or buy your own program to create a savable/restorable version of a spooled file. While IBM provided some spooled file APIs to help you to create a savable version, these versions were not always completely restorable — certain spooled file attributes were ignored.
V5R4’s new capability does not miss any spooled file attributes and it provides an IBM-supported mechanism — something that’s been missing in even the best homegrown solution.
To accomplish the change, a new parameter called SPLFDTA has been added to the SAVLIB, SAVOBJ, RSTLIB, and RSTOBJ commands. Let’s look at a few V5R4 examples of the save and restore commands as they relate to spooled files.
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