Problem:
I want to be able to make my MFE Catalog portable by mapping a drive, and then pointing the Mainframe Express Catalog datasets to this mapped location without having to individually select each dataset, right click, select Properties, then change the PC path to the new location.
Does Mainframe Express have a tool to do this?
Resolution:
Yes, but this needs an explanation.
First, go to Tools>Catalog>Catalog Utility, select the catalog in use and then click on Relative and finally click the OK button.
Second, go to the Project View and select the Catalog tab to view the datasets defined there. Notice the upper right hand corner has an option 'Display relative path(s) if present'.
Once the Catalog Utility has been set to Relative, this function becomes active and it is a toggle to display the relative or real path of the datasets. So this option defines the CONTENTS of the Mainframe Express Catalog.Dat file which is a PC file containing the names and locations of the catalogued datasets.
To define the Catalog.Dat ITSELF as relative, one must move the Catalog.Dat (or copy it) to a directory subordinate to the Mainframe Express project, then go to Project>Project Settings, Catalog tab, General tab and use '.\\catalog.dat' as the location of the catalog file. This will define the Catalog.Dat file relative to the MFE project.
After this, programmer 1 can zip up the entire project and pass it to programmer 2. Programmer 2 can use the same project and datasets provided he/she has the same mapped drive definitions as programmer 1.
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