I am running Focus 7.3.5 in an MVS environment. I am running a large number of records through on a match file and it is blowing up. I get the following message: (FOC920) FOCSORT HAS REACHED ITS LIMIT OF 524287 PAGES

I did a ? STAT and the results say Focus is using Focsort. I have EXTSORT = ON but it still does not call the external sort. What else do I need to check or do so it uses the external sort program (which in this case is syncsort)? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Have you allocated the SYNCSORT temporary files? Something like this:

//S001WK01 DD UNIT=PUBLIC,SPACE=(CYL,(100,10),RLSE),DCB=BLKSIZE=0
//S001WK02 DD UNIT=PUBLIC,SPACE=(CYL,(100,10),RLSE),DCB=BLKSIZE=0
//S001WK03 DD UNIT=PUBLIC,SPACE=(CYL,(100,10),RLSE),DCB=BLKSIZE=0
//S001WK04 DD UNIT=PUBLIC,SPACE=(CYL,(100,10),RLSE),DCB=BLKSIZE=0
//S001WK05 DD UNIT=PUBLIC,SPACE=(CYL,(100,10),RLSE),DCB=BLKSIZE=0
//S001WK06 DD UNIT=PUBLIC,SPACE=(CYL,(100,10),RLSE),DCB=BLKSIZE=0

Francis,

Yes, I have 9 of them defined:

//S001WK01 DD UNIT=SYSDA,SPACE=(CYL,(200,200))
//S001WK02 DD UNIT=SYSDA,SPACE=(CYL,(200,200))
//S001WK03 DD UNIT=SYSDA,SPACE=(CYL,(200,200))
//S001WK04 DD UNIT=SYSDA,SPACE=(CYL,(200,200))
//S001WK05 DD UNIT=SYSDA,SPACE=(CYL,(200,200))
//S001WK06 DD UNIT=SYSDA,SPACE=(CYL,(200,200))
//S001WK07 DD UNIT=SYSDA,SPACE=(CYL,(200,200))
//S001WK08 DD UNIT=SYSDA,SPACE=(CYL,(200,200))
//S001WK09 DD UNIT=SYSDA,SPACE=(CYL,(200,200))

Everytime I run it says the sort is done in Focus and I get the following error when matching:

(FOC920) FOCSORT HAS REACHED ITS LIMIT OF 524287 PAGES

I think I found the answer to my question. It could be invoking an external sort, however it says it is still FOCUS. I pulled the following from the Tech Support website:

"MATCH FILE makes a complete reporting pass (and sort) from each section of the MATCH FILE. Each one of these sorts may utilize the external sort. However, the answer sets from each of the sections must subsequently be merged. This process always uses FOCSORT and must therefore fit in the FOCSORT allocation specified. In addition, the statistics from MATCH FILE will always show FOCUS as the sort engine, as the last step in the process is, indeed, FOCUS, not the external sort."

Now I just need to figure out another way to do it because I am hitting my 2gig FOCSORT limit.