If you work long enough at a single shop, you'd probably won't bother about this question - because the chances are that you'd never use another SORT product than the one in use at your shop. Ah...wait there can still be exception if you are at a SyncSort shop whose database product is IBM DB2... wait... what!? Well, yes - but we'll talk about it later and first we'll talk about the subject line for this post! :)
If in your Job you code EXEC PGM=SORT or EXEC PGM=ICEMAN -- both of them will invoke the default SORT program at your shop. If you are at a DFSort shop, EXEC PGM=SORT will invoke the IBM's SORT product - DFSort. On the other hand at a SyncSort shop EXEC PGM=SORT or EXEC PGM=ICEMAN will invoke the SyncSort's SORT unless the System Programmer mandates to type PGM=SYNCSORT which is very unlikely and stupid actually.
So, SyncSort is a sort product produced by an IBM competitor named Syncsort. There is another SORT product known as CA-Sort and is a sort product produced by an IBM competitor named CA. DFSORT is the IBM sort product.
While some sites might have more than one sort product, they are not cheap and hence most sites only use one sort product so it is fairly rare to have a choice of which to use and that's why I said that if you work long enough at a shop...
And the exception about DB2 is -- For a DB2 shop, even when you are using SyncSort as the primary SORT product, DB2 will invoke DFSort internally if it needs to do some SORTing (ORDER BY or GROUP BY etc.)
If in your Job you code EXEC PGM=SORT or EXEC PGM=ICEMAN -- both of them will invoke the default SORT program at your shop. If you are at a DFSort shop, EXEC PGM=SORT will invoke the IBM's SORT product - DFSort. On the other hand at a SyncSort shop EXEC PGM=SORT or EXEC PGM=ICEMAN will invoke the SyncSort's SORT unless the System Programmer mandates to type PGM=SYNCSORT which is very unlikely and stupid actually.
So, SyncSort is a sort product produced by an IBM competitor named Syncsort. There is another SORT product known as CA-Sort and is a sort product produced by an IBM competitor named CA. DFSORT is the IBM sort product.
While some sites might have more than one sort product, they are not cheap and hence most sites only use one sort product so it is fairly rare to have a choice of which to use and that's why I said that if you work long enough at a shop...
And the exception about DB2 is -- For a DB2 shop, even when you are using SyncSort as the primary SORT product, DB2 will invoke DFSort internally if it needs to do some SORTing (ORDER BY or GROUP BY etc.)
