This document provides information on using external SORT
programs with Natural.
The following topics are covered:
The Natural SORT
statement may optionally invoke an external SORT program that
carries out the actual sorting. An external SORT program is used
if the keyword subparameter EXT of the
macro NTSORT
is set to ON.
Natural supports all external SORT programs that comply
with the SORT interface documented in the relevant IBM manuals
(for z/OS, z/VSE and CMS) and Siemens manuals (for BS2000/OSD).
The requirements (for example, space and datasets) are identical to
those for the execution of a 3GL (for example, COBOL, PL/I) application program
that invokes the operating system SORT program and can vary
according to the external SORT program in use.
The communication with the external SORT program is via the
E15 and E35 user-exit routines. As a consequence, Natural does not require the
datasets SORTIN and SORTOUT.
All external SORT programs supporting the extended
parameter list can be used.
The external SORT program is loaded into the partition
program area. For this reason, you must add round about 200 KB additional
storage to the size requirements of the Natural batch nucleus specified in the
SIZE parameter of the EXEC statement.
Example:
// EXEC <natural>,SIZE(<natural>,200K)
where <natural> is the
name of your Natural phase.
The external SORT program is called using the level 1
interface. That is, Natural passes all SORT control statements to
the external SORT program and dataset SYSDTA is not
used for input.
The external SORT program is searched for in the following
libraries:
User TASKLIB concatenated with the BLSLIB
chain, if a User TASKLIB was specified,
System TASKLIB ($TSOS.TASKLIB) concatenated with the
BLSLIB chain.
