SMFGrepper tool is an attempt to extract the required fields from a specific z/OS SMF record type through a DFSORT data input E15 exit and produce a z/OS SMF report.
z/OS SMF reporting is a challenge to mainframe systems programmer and performance analyst. There is a lot of information contained in each SMF record. Each SMF record type format is always well documented by each software product which produces the record. The record format is mostly described in mainframe assembly DSECT. At the same time, the complexity of SMF record format inherent a major difficulty to extract necessary information.
There are some commercial softwares to produce valuable reports from SMF record dataset. However, the SMF reporting tools for 'poor systems programmer' is very limited. A number of attempts have been made and are available freely in internet to produce some specific reports. The effort to produce a new SMF report without commercial software is huge. As a result, a cheap (low CPU horse power consumption) and simple generic tool to produce SMF report is always on the wish list of most mainframe datacenter owner, systems programmer and performance analyst.
Mainframe DFSORT has been evolving since it is available. It is now capable to convert time field in SMF record, calculate/convert Julian date, understand or produce CSV report, summarize or generate a very nice format report. In general, DFSORT is a very good tool to understand fixed record format input data. SMF record is variable content based on the content of header fields. DFSORT is not able to interpret some complex SMF record types like Type 30, 72, 110 etc.
SMFGrepper tool is able to bridge the gap and exploit the capability of DFSORT to interpret SMF records.
For details, please send email to support@smfgrepper.com.
