I have searched this (and other) information repositories, and have yet to come up with a solution that resolves this external sort error message:ERROR AT OR NEAR LINE 316 IN PROCEDURE XXXXXXXX FOCEXEC (FOC909)CRITICAL ERROR IN EXTERNAL SORT.RETURN CODE IS: 0016This message occurs on a sort statement:PRINT BP2 IC2 AR2 DP2 RA2 FF2 RI2 PP2 FD2 LD2 AC2 BY BP2 NOPRINT BY IC2 NOPRINT BY AR2 NOPRINT ON TABLE HOLD AS S2END I use SYNCSORT; system is z/OS Version 1 Release 9; on IBM Z890.I have tried increasing extents, using S001WKS instead of SORTWKS, using S001WKS AND SORTWKS,added ESTRECORDS = 10000000 and various lower rec amaounts.I now have the following SETs in my program:SET HIPERFOCUS = OFF SET AUTOPATH = ON SET EXTSORT = ON SET BINS = 60 SET WIDTH = 132 and presently have the following space allowances://FOCSORT DD UNIT=SYSDA,SPACE=(CYL,(125,25),RLSE) //FOCSTACK DD UNIT=SYSDA,SPACE=(TRK,(25,25),RLSE) //SORTWK01 DD UNIT=SYSDA,SPACE=(CYL,(25,25),RLSE) //SORTWK02 DD UNIT=SYSDA,SPACE=(CYL,(25,25),RLSE) //SORTWK03 DD UNIT=SYSDA,SPACE=(CYL,(25,25),RLSE) //SORTWK04 DD UNIT=SYSDA,SPACE=(CYL,(25,25),RLSE) //SORTWK05 DD UNIT=SYSDA,SPACE=(CYL,(25,25),RLSE) //SORTWK06 DD UNIT=SYSDA,SPACE=(CYL,(25,25),RLSE) //SORTWK07 DD UNIT=SYSDA,SPACE=(CYL,(25,25),RLSE) //SORTWK08 DD UNIT=SYSDA,SPACE=(CYL,(25,25),RLSE) //* //S1 DD UNIT=SYSDA,SPACE=(CYL,(25,25),RLSE) //S2 DD UNIT=SYSDA,SPACE=(CYL,(25,25),RLSE) //S3 DD UNIT=SYSDA,SPACE=(CYL,(25,25),RLSE) This is our standard setup for external sorting.There are about 100,000 records involved.Any help with this would be appreciated.Thx,Joe

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Joe_So_Cool,

Does reducing the number of records sorted by using a readlimit in the focexec make the problem disappear?

0016 for FOC909 usually indicates that it is a space issue as Ginny suggests.

With 8 sort work file of 25,25 Cylinders you expect that to be quite ample for 100K rows.

Have you checked that the space for the allocation of the work files physically exists on SYSDA?

Thank you both;

I do have that amount allocated to the sortwks; yes we have enough space on sysda. Both readlimit and recordlimit eliminate the issue for testing purposes, but I'll need all of the records available for actual processing. I guess I'm asking this question because I have other FOCUS programs working with even larger amounts of recs and have never had this problem before. Thanks again for trying to help, Joe.

It might work better if the code did not use noprint on the by statements.
PRINT DP2 RA2 FF2 RI2 PP2 FD2 LD2 AC2 BY BP2 BY IC2 BY AR2 ON TABLE HOLD AS S2END

(CASE CLOSED)

oops, forgot to do this, thx again folks