The special CATRETPD date format is CATRETPD, which is the minimum catalog retention period. CATRETPD is set for a data set retained by a vital record specification with the WHILECATALOG operand when the data set is not cataloged and the CATRETPD time period has not passed. In this example without using the parmlib option CATRETPD(12) to retain the data set created at 8:00 AM, DFSMSrmm does not retain the data set because it was not cataloged at 12:00 PM when DFSMSrmm inventory management was run.

8:00 AM                12:00 PM            2:00 PM             7:00 PM
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data set created       HSKP starts         HSKP ends           step or job ends
                                                               data set cataloged

In this example using the parmlib option CATRETPD(12) to retain the data set created at 8:00 AM, DFSMSrmm ignores the fact that the data set is not cataloged for 12 hours until 8 PM. DFSMSrmm retains the data set rather than releasing it when DFSMSrmm inventory management is run (12:00 PM through 2:00 PM).

8:00 AM                12:00 PM            2:00 PM             7:00 PM
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data set created       HSKP starts         HSKP ends           step or job ends
                                                               data set cataloged