VTS-TSRs are managed by a tableBASE process. If your installation includes only the VTS product with or without VTS Gate, your VTS-TSRs are managed by the VTS Agent. In order to create a VTS-TSR under the VTS product, a VTS Agent must be started.
The start-up job to create a VTS-TSR may be included in the start-up procedures at IPL time for the installation but it must start after the tableBASE Program Call Server has been started. If your installation includes the VTS Gate product, your VTS-TSR start-up job may require special authorization in order to start.
For more information on the tableBASE Program Call Server and VTS Agent, see the tableBASE Administration Guide.
The VTS Agent was referred to as the VTS Server in previous releases.
Each VTS-TSR is identified by a unique eight-character VTS-TSR name defined to MVS. This name is used to provide a logical connection between the VTS-TSR and the VTS user. Each VTS-TSR may be defined to hold a maximum of 2G of table data. Tables can be loaded with a utility (TBDRIVER) or by any region with access to the VTS-TSR.
With VTS Gate, your VTS-TSR can be started up in read-only mode. It this is the case, it must be switched to read-write mode before the VTS can be updated and tables can be loaded. For more information on when a VTS-TSR can be started up in read-only mode, see TSR_KEY_PROTECT—Hardware Key Protection for VTS-TSRs and TSRACCESS—Read Only (RO) or Read Write (RW) TSR Access.
While a read-only VTS-TSR is switched to read-write mode for updating, the VTS-TSR is locked and no user applications may access the VTS. Any attempts to access the VTS will fail with an error code.
Starting with Version 7, a VTS-TSR now contains a generation number. This generation number increases each time a VTS-TSR is restarted or switched to read-only or read-write mode. This field is contained in VTS-DATA and can be obtained using the LV command. If the VTS has been started up with other VTS Gate security options, this information is also available in VTS-DATA. More information on VTS-DATA is available under VTS-DATA (60 bytes).
A VTS user application may refer to any number of VTS-TSRs concurrently. Should the VTS-TSR abend during execution for any reason, the VTS user applications will not be able to access the VTS-TSR and an error code is returned indicating that the VTS-TSR is unavailable at this time. The Operations support staff may re-submit the start-up job to MVS for re-initialization of the VTS-TSR.