Navigation and Profile

Access QMF from ISPF

STEP-1: - Log in to TSO (Time Sharing Option)

Enter your user ID and password on the mainframe login screen. You’ll see the TSO READY prompt or go directly to ISPF.

STEP-2: - Enter ISPF

If you see READY prompt, type ISPF and press Enter. You’ll now see the ISPF Primary Option Menu (usually looks like this):

STEP-3: - Select QMF (Option can be changed according to the installation)

Type 17 (sometimes 16 depending on installation) and press Enter.

The QMF Main Menu (QMF Home screen) appears:

From here on, the navigation is mainly depends on the functional keys.

From the QMF Main menu, press PF11 to get profile details. It displays the below profile details.

All the options are self explained and modify the necessary details and click on PF2 and PF3 to save the details.

QMF provides three types of queries:

Structured Query Language (SQL): SQL is a language similar to English that is used to write queries. SQL queries offer the most flexibility in the way you can write your queries.
Prompted Query: A Prompted Query uses a series of prompts that ask you to answer fill-in-the-blank questions. After you respond, the system automatically generates the corresponding query statements. This method is ideal for beginners or occasional QMF users, as it does not require any knowledge of SQL syntax.
Query By Example (QBE): QBE is another approach for extracting data from the database. It allows you to create queries with relatively few keystrokes.