The CERN Tape Management System is fully integrated into the FATMEN package in an automatic and transparent manner. In addition, direct access to the TMS is possible via the SYSREQ interface, which provides both a FORTRAN callable and a command line interface.
Jobs running on remote systems will interface to the local or CERN TMS as defined by the local implementation.
The CERN Tape Management System is described in DD/TMS/UG.
When an attempt is made to access existing data which resides on tape, the file catalogue routines will check access rights to and availability of the tape in question. It will then issue the appropriate STAGE command to copy the data onto disk. No knowledge of the tape details, such as file number, dataset name or location, are required by the user.
When creating new datasets on tape, the FATMEN system will use the next free tape that is allocated to the user or group, according to the access rules defined in the Tape Management System for the group in question. The default medium is 3480. Alternatively, the user may override the default options, specifying a different media type, an explicit tape volume etc. This allows for tape allocation to be performed at run time, job submission time, or at any time prior to job submission time.