When you have many checks, you can use categories to make it easier to manage or display information.

• Use the ADDCAT, REPCAT, and REMCAT parameters:
  • ADDCAT lets you add the specified check to a category
  • REPCAT lets you replace a category for a check
  • REMCAT lets you remove a check from a category
• Use the CATEGORY filter to filter actions against checks by category. CATEGORY accepts up to 16 named categories, each represented by a 1-16 character string.

For example, you might put checks into categories such as shift and offshift, global, or exception. Then you can perform actions such as activate, deactivate or run a group of checks with one command. All categories are user-defined; IBM® does not define any categories for checks.

The following examples shows how you can use categories in the HZSPRMxx member and in the MODIFY command to manage checks:

1. First, I add a number of checks to a new category, DEBUG in the HZSPRMxx.

   /* add some checks to category debug */
   ADD POLICY STMT(POL1) UPDATE CHECK(IBMUSS,USS_FILESYS_CONFIG)
       ADDCAT(DEBUGCAT)
   ADD POLICY STMT(POL2) UPDATE CHECK(IBMCNZ,CNZ_TASK_TABLE)
       ADDCAT(DEBUGCAT)
             .
             .
             .
   ADD POLICY STMT(POL17) UPDATE CHECK(IBMGRS,*)
       ADDCAT(DEBUGCAT)

   This takes some time, but it will save time in step 2.
2. Now I want to put all the checks from category DEBUG into debug mode. I only want to do this temporarily, so I do this with a MODIFY command. I can do this without specifying all those long check names by using the category filter:

   F hzsproc,UPDATE,CHECKS=(*,*),CATEGORY=(DEBUGCAT),DEBUG=ON 

But there's more you can do with the CATEGORY filter! The syntax of the filter is:

CATEGORY=([{ANY|EVERY|EXCEPT|ONLY},][category1[,...,categoryn]])

I can assign checks to multiple categories, and sort them out on the CATEGORY filter using ONLY, ANY, EVERY, and EXCEPT:

ANY

Checks that are in any of the specified categories

EVERY

Checks that are in every specified category

EXCEPT

Checks that are not in any of the specified categories

ONLY

Checks that are in every one of the specified categories and that have only as many categories as are specified. For example, a check assigned to three categories would not match if the CATEGORY=ONLY statement on this MODIFY command specified two categories.

ONLY is the default, but for the sake of clarity, we recommend that you specify the category option that you want.

For example, in the following scenario, I have checks ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR, and FIVE in the following categories:

So if I create a policy statement in my HZSPRMxx member to change existing and future checks to LOW severity in every category except category IMPORTANT:

ADD POLICY STMT(LOWCAT) UPDATE CHECK(*,*) 
     CATEGORY(EXCEPT,IMPORTANT)
     SEVERITY(LOW)

This will affect only checks that are not in the IMPORTANT category, which will be checks THREE and FIVE.

Using these categories and checks, the following table shows how a bunch of category filters map to checks affected in our scenario: