Communicating With MVS

TSO/E allows you to communicate with the MVS™ operating system to do work. Ways to communicate with MVS are through:

TSO/E Commands: Commands control your access to the system, determine your terminal characteristics while you are on the system, allow communication between TSO/E users, and manage data sets.
ISPF/PDF Panels: Interactive System Productivity Facility (ISPF) provides the underlying dialog management service for the ISPF/Program Development Facility (ISPF/PDF). ISPF/PDF is a dialog that allows a TSO/E user to issue TSO/E commands directly or indirectly from panels.
Information about ISPF/PDF as it relates to specific TSO/E tasks is covered in this topic.
Programs: Programs contain instructions that perform tasks. Some common programming languages used under TSO/E are assembler, COBOL, FORTRAN, Pascal, PL/I, REXX, and CLIST. REXX and CLIST (Command List) are high-level interpretive programming languages that allow you to combine TSO/E commands with language statements. For information about CLISTs, see z/OS TSO/E CLISTs. For information about REXX, see z/OS TSO/E REXX User's Guide and z/OS TSO/E REXX Reference.
For information about programming languages used at your installation, see your installation librarian.
JCL: Job Control Language defines work (jobs) for an operating system. A TSO/E terminal session is considered a job.
For information about JCL, see z/OS MVS JCL Reference.

This topic emphasizes how to use TSO/E commands. Using TSO/E Commands explains:

The syntax and rules for using TSO/E commands
- Using command operands
- Abbreviating commands and keywords
- Separating words in a command
- Continuing a command on another line
- Including comments
- Subcommands
How to issue TSO/E commands
How to get help for TSO/E commands

It also provides a list of common TSO/E commands.

One major function of commands is to manage data sets. Data sets are files or units of information that might contain text, data, programs, or JCL. Using Data Sets explains:

Two types of data sets:
- Sequential
- Partitioned
Data set naming rules and conventions
How to enter data set names