This week I will tell you a little about HSM. The command TSO HQ (HQ stands for HSM QUERY) can tell you about the status of your requests to HSM. This is very useful to find out how your recalls are, if you have made recall requests.

The real good thing about TSO HQ is that it can tell you about requests your batchjob has made. If you have submitted a batchjob, it normally runs using your userid and therefore you are able to find out if it is using HSM by issuing a TSO HQ from your TSO session.

Lets assume you have a batchjob, that normally runs in no time, but some day it suddenly does nothing for a long time even though nothing has changed. Such a situation often occurs because the job uses a dataset that HSM has migrated. Now you can easily find out by issuing a TSO HQ. If it is not the case, you have ruled out that possibility.

The frustating part of TSO HQ is that it only gives the status of your own userid. This is particularly irritating when you find out, that you a number five in line. If you have operator access you can issue command /F HSM,Q AC (if HSM is the name of the HSM task) to find out about all datasets being recalled. If yu don't have operator access (most of us don't) then you have to ask some one with operator access to find out what HSM is busy doing.