Have you ever wondered how many different datasets you have access to. I am a curious guy so I have discovered that it is actually possible to find out using a single command. You simply execute the command TSO SR NOMASK. Before you actually run it I must warn you about some details. It takes a long time to execute the command and the output from the command is not able to be trapped. Especially the latter is extremely annoying. Instead I will recommend you to use the following simple jobstep and browse the result in SDSF/SYSVIEW:

//RACFACCS EXEC PGM=IKJEFT01,PARM=’SR NOMASK’
//SYSTSIN  DD DUMMY
//SYSTSPRT DD SYSOUT=*

In PARM= you specify the TSO command you want to execute. The result of the command is printed on SYSTSPRT. The output on SYSTSPRT may look like this:

SOME.DATASET
DATASET.NO.TWO
THE.THIRD.DATASET
A.DATASET.MASK.**
MORE.DATASET.MASKS.**

The first part is a list of all the fully named datasets you have at least READ access to in EBCDIC order. Second part of the list is all the so-called dataset profiles, which you have at least READ access to, again in EBCDIC order. All fully named datasets matching a dataset profile in the list do you have at least READ access to. When interpreting a dataset profile it comes in handy to know that % matches a single character, * matches a single dataset qualifier and ** matches zero to may qualifiers.

The first time I executed the command I was totally surprised by the number of different datasets I had access to on that installation. 99% of the datasets I would never be near of having any use of browsing. Well, now you are warned. And think about it is only the datasets you have access to.

As mentioned earlier it may take quite a while to execute the command and the list may be very long. Therefore I think you would like to know that if you are interested in for instance your access to all datasets with a high level qualifier of BACKUP you can use the command SR FILTER(BACKUP.**). Then the command executes a lot faster and the output is probably much shorter. By the way SR is an abbreviation of SEARCH.