Command responses

With the exception of the /DISPLAY command, /FORMAT command, and type-2 commands returned through the OM API, responses to IMS™ commands are prefixed by the letters DFSnnn; nnn identifies the message.

A response to an IMS command is an acknowledgment from IMS to the originating terminal that the command has been received. Responses that go to the system console have an IMS ID that identifies the IMS system that issued the message. For example, the response to /DBDUMP DATABASE MSDB would be:

DFS058I (time stamp) DBDUMP COMMAND IN PROGRESS  (IMS id)

At system definition, the TIMESTAMP/NOTIMESTP parameter of the COMM macro determines whether the time stamp is present or absent. If the time stamp feature is included, the date and time of the response appear between the response prefix and the text.

The DFS058 COMMAND COMPLETED/IN PROGRESS response indicates whether IMS accepted the command. If some parameters of the command are not accepted, the response includes the EXCEPT phrase and indicates the parameters that were not accepted. If IMS does not have the space for all of the not-accepted parameters, it truncates the EXCEPT phrase and terminates it with …etc.. Commands that specify the ALL parameter are most likely to be truncated. Truncated EXCEPT phrases on commands are normally caused by:

Misspelling a parameter
Specifying an invalid parameter for the command
Specifying the ALL parameter for resources when some of them are already in the requested state