IBM Mainframe Forum

can anybody talk about the difference between Dfsort and Syncsort?
and anybody know a link for Syncsort's syntax or manual, thanks.

Hello,

DFSORT is an IBM product. Syncsort is a Syncsort product.

Syncsort documentation is available to organizations who license the product. If your organization is licensed, all of the material is available for free from Syncsort support.

My opinions:

1. Syncsort is usually playing catch-up to mimic the new functions being added to DFSORT.

2. Syncsort is a good product and has one particular feature (MAXSORT) that was widley used at my old shop. A common set of JCL could be used to handle both small and very large input files. If needed, Sysncsort breaks the input file, based on your size settings, into smaller sorts and does a merge step at the end. It's all automatic and restartable at any breakpoint.

DFSORT (from IBM) and Syncsort from Syncsort, Inc are competitive products. Although they have many of the same functions, each has functions not found in the other product.

Complete documentation for DFSORT and DFSORT's ICETOOL is available free online to everyone from:

http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss? ... g3T7000080

Syncsort documention can only be obtained from Syncsort by licensed Syncsort customers - it is not available online. There is NO documentation available for Syncsort's SYNCTOOL.

For some reason, Bill always brings up MAXSORT, but we've found that it isn't used by many customers and for those who do use it we can suggest alternatives.

If anyone on this board would like some documents prepared by the DFSORT Team that describe what we see as the advantages of DFSORT over Syncsort, as well as considersations for migrating from Syncsort to DFSORT, send me an e-mail offline (yaeger@us.ibm.com). Please put "DFSORT" somewhere in your Subject line to catch my attention.

Frank Yaeger wrote: For some reason, Bill always brings up MAXSORT.....

Probably because the question was regarding differences and MAXSORT is one of the differences.