Extended Format

Extended format displays the presence of DFSMS Extended Format data sets and the attributes assigned to the data sets:

  • EA indicates that the data set is defined with the Extended Addressability attribute. If it is followed by (XRBA), the data set was accessed with the XRBA option.

  • COMP indicates that the data set is eligible for SMS compression. It may be followed by:

  • %nn, the amount of compression for compressed data

  • %, indicating that the compressed size is invalid

  • blank (no percentage display), which indicates that the data is allocated in compressed format; however, the contents of the data is not compressed because either SMS determined that compression would cause excessive overhead or SMS could not select a suitable dictionary.

Note: If the COMP field does not display, SMS may have rejected the request for compression at allocation time because the data set is not large enough to take advantage of the compression attribute.

More about the Data Set Characteristics report