The other day, I was confronted with a task in which I needed to change the journaling characteristics of a physical file. The file was being journaled with *AFTER images only, and I needed to change the journaling to capture *BOTH before and after images.

I suspected I would need to end journaling of the file and then start journaling (STRJRNPF) with the *BOTH (before and after images) option. I didn't know all the ramifications that the stop and start would have, but I knew that I wanted to avoid it if possible. I was unaware of any way to do this. So I needed to check whether there was a way to change the journaling characteristics without ending the journaling of the file on a live system.

I used the CL command GO CMDJRN to review commands that relate to journaling, and I found the Change Journaled Object (CHGJRNOBJ) command. I prompted the command (F4) and pressed F1 to review the command help text. It turns out that the command was exactly what I was looking for.

Here's a snippet from the command online help text from IBM.

The Change Journaled Object (CHGJRNOBJ) command changes the journaling attributes of a journaled object without the need to end and restart journaling for the object.

The command can be used to change the Images (IMAGES) value for a database file (*FILE) or a data area (*DTAARA) object without the need to end and restart journaling for the object.

The command can be used to change the Omit journal entry (OMTJRNE) value for a database file (*FILE), an integrated file system stream file (*STMF) or directory (*DIR) object without the need to end and restart journaling for the object.

Only one journaling attribute can be changed at a time.

Because I needed to change the IMAGES attribute from *AFTER to *BOTH, I used the command:

CHGJRNOBJ OBJ((MYLIB/MYFILE *FILE)) ATR(*IMAGES) IMAGES(*BOTH)

Then, in order to omit the Open and Close journal entries I used the command:

CHGJRNOBJ OBJ((MYLIB/MYFILE *FILE)) ATR(*OMTJRNE) OMTJRNE(*OPNCLOSYN)

As the help text says, you can change only one attribute per execution of the command--thus the need to run the command twice, once for each attribute to be changed.