MERGECOPY

The MERGECOPY online utility merges copies or inline copies that other utilities produce. The COPY and COPYTOCOPY utilities produce image copies, and the LOAD and REORG utilities produce inline copies.

Start of change The utility can merge several incremental copies of a table space to make one incremental copy. It can also merge incremental copies with a full image copy to make a new full image copy. You cannot run MERGECOPY on concurrent copies or FlashCopy® image copies. End of change

MERGECOPY operates on the image copy data sets of a table space, and not on the table space itself.

If you are creating copies in a JES3 environment, ensure that sufficient units are available to mount the required image copies. In a JES3 environment, if the number of image copies that are to be restored exceeds the number of available online and offline units, and if the MERGECOPY job successfully allocates all available units, the job waits for more units to become available.

Output

Output from the MERGECOPY utility consists of one of the following types of copies:

A new single incremental image copy
A new full image copy

You can create the new image copy for the local or recovery site.

Authorization required

To execute this utility, you must use a privilege set that includes one of the following authorities:

IMAGCOPY privilege for the database
DBADM, DBCTRL, or DBMAINT authority for the database. If the object on which the utility operates is in an implicitly created database, DBADM authority on the implicitly created database or DSNDB04 is required.
DATAACCESS authority
SYSCTRL or SYSADM authority

An ID with installation SYSOPR authority can also execute MERGECOPY, but only on a table space in the DSNDB01 or DSNDB06 database.

Restrictions on running MERGECOPY

MERGECOPY cannot merge image copies into a single incremental image copy for the other site, that is:
- At local sites, you cannot use RECOVERYDDN with NEWCOPY NO.
- At recovery sites, you cannot use COPYDDN with NEWCOPY NO.
When none of the keywords NEWCOPY, COPYDDN, or RECOVERYDDN is specified, the default, NEWCOPY NO COPYDDN(SYSCOPY), is valid for the local site only.
You cannot run MERGECOPY on concurrent copies.
You cannot run the MERGECOPY utility on the DSNDB01.DBD01, DSNDB01.SYSUTILX, DSNDB06.SYSCOPY, or DSNDB01.SYSDBDXA table spaces, because you cannot make incremental copies of those table spaces.

Execution phases of MERGECOPY

The MERGECOPY utility operates in these phases:

Phase: Description
UTILINIT: Performs initialization
MERGECOP: Merges incremental copies
UTILTERM: Performs cleanup

Syntax and options of the MERGECOPY control statement
The MERGECOPY utility control statement, with its multiple options, defines the function that the utility job performs.
Data sets that MERGECOPY uses
The MERGECOPY utility uses a number of data sets during its operation.
Concurrency and compatibility for MERGECOPY
The MERGECOPY utility has certain concurrency and compatibility characteristics associated with it.
Full or incremental image copy
You can use the NEWCOPY parameter if the new copy that MERGECOPY creates is to be an incremental image copy or a full image copy.
How MERGECOPY determines which input copy to use
The MERGECOPY utility uses as input the image copies that match the current site.
Merging online copies
If you merge an online copy with incremental copies, the result is a full inline copy. The data set is logically equivalent to a full image copy, but the data within the data set differs in some respects
Using MERGECOPY with individual data sets
Use MERGECOPY on copies of an entire table space, on individual data sets, or on partitions. However, MERGECOPY can only merge incremental copies of the same type. That is, you cannot merge incremental copies of an entire table space with incremental copies of individual data sets to form new incremental copies.
Using MERGECOPY or COPY
COPY and MERGECOPY can create a full image copy. COPY is required after a LOAD or REORG with LOG NO unless an inline copy is created. However, in other cases an incremental image copy followed by MERGECOPY is a valid alternative.
Avoiding MERGECOPY LOG RBA inconsistencies
MERGECOPY does not use information that was logged between the time of the most recent image copy and the time when MERGECOPY was run. Therefore, you cannot safely delete all log records that were created before you ran MERGECOPY.
Termination or restart of MERGECOPY
You can terminate and restart the MERGECOPY utility.
Sample MERGECOPY control statements
Use the sample control statements as models for developing your own MERGECOPY control statements.

Parent topic: DB2 online utilities