IBM Mainframe Forum

I don't like that, bodatrinadh. It'll "work", but since the datasets are supposed to be in sequence, the problem is pointing to at least one error somewhere else. If you just "get around" the problem, then you've missed the opportunity to pick up the error(s) which might be a symptom of something worse, which won't then be found for a month, which has by that time screwed up the system magnificently.

Plus, if the data is supposed to be sorted, sorting it again is a waste. That is what MERGE is for, for operating on datasets which are already in the sequence you want.

Thanks Billy for explaining the significance of giving individual dataset in SORTINxx rather than concatenation and merge funtion in sort utility...

Thank you all...specially to billy...its working fine now...again i sorted both files and merged and its working fine...billy can you please tell me which tutorial is best one to learn JCL....

Well, bodatrinadh suggested that

Just to be clear, you stated that both datasets were in sorted order. Have you a) corrected the sort steps which were not working on the input datasets? or b) sorted them (again) just to get your merge to work?

If b), go back and do a).