My site has an ADSM server running on an MVS system with the CA-1 TMS (Tape
Management System). The TMS recognizes ADSM offsite tapes by the dataset names
used on the tapes and sends such tapes to a vault. This happens twice each
morning. ADSM marks tapes offsite at the end of its daily cycle of inventory
expiration, storage pool backup, and database backup. There is no interlock
between the TMS and ADSM processes for handling offsite tapes. We have
occasionally had failures when ADSM thought a tape was onsite and TMS had just
sent it offsite.

If I am reading the CA-1 documentation correctly, we could eliminate the Vault
Pattern Dataset entries currently used to identify ADSM offsite tapes and have
the ADSM batch jobs flag tapes as candidates for vaulting by updating the
OUTCODE and OUTDATE fields for the tapes involved. This would be done by
having a Rexx script generate control records for the TMSUPDTE utility. One of
my co-workers insists that this will not work, and suggests a more complex set
of scheduling constraints on the ADSM and CA-1 batch jobs as a means of
avoiding problems. Has anyone successfully carried out the sort of scheme
outlined above? Does anyone know of a better approach to maintaing
coordination between ADSM and CA-1 regarding the movement of offsite tapes?