John, I think that the aliases can work. Not so sure about the dynamic portion. Seems like it would be easier to create a short procedure for each product that would fix up the aliases by environment that would be used when you are doing maintenance to a product.
SYS1.V1R0.LINKLIB might have an alias of SYS1.PROD.LINKLIB SYS1.V1R1.LINKLIB might have an alias of SYS1.DEV.LINKLIB. Ultimately, the migration would have SYS1.V1R1.LINKLIB have 2 aliases .. one for dev .. one for prod. And if you wanted to keep things consistent.. then one for your tech services system(s). I would have the JCL point to some DEV or PROD version as well. 1 JCL change.. lots of alias changes. Although.. is it a "pick your poison" that works best for you and your environment. If you have strong control of your JCL... maybe JCL change is a better choice. If you need to "slide" things in... and avoid JCL .. then aliases may be the trick. I like catalog tricks in general .. they are tons of fun. Of course there are those that are driven crazy by them. I used to be a "stupid catalog tricks" (Dave Letterman anyone?) were "always the way" kind of person. But I think now that it is better to step back and think about your environment and what will work best for the environment. Cheers, Rob -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Don Imbriale Sent: Tuesday, February 22, 2011 1:11 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: cascading catalog dataset aliases. If management requires the dsnames to include the version number, then doesn't the JCL have to be changed anyway to avoid confusion? For example, if you're running V1R1 and want to upgrade to V1R2, if you use aliases then the JCL would say V1R1 but would resolve to V1R2. And you know who gets the blame when there's a problem. - Don Imbriale On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 9:52 AM, McKown, John <[email protected] > wrote: > But then the job must run on that system. I would like the option to > run on any system using the identical JCL, but using the proper > system-specific version of the DSN. > > OK, I'm being extreme for my needs. But imagine a parallel sysplex > running > 6 systems. I guess those shops properly design things so that system > specific datasets are not needed. Or they exist with the same DSN, but > in different catalogs. > > I'll likely go with the system-specific ALIAS. If someone runs the job > on the wrong system, then that's their worry. > > -- > John McKown > Systems Engineer IV > IT > > Administrative Services Group > > HealthMarkets(r) > > 9151 Boulevard 26 * N. Richland Hills * TX 76010 > (817) 255-3225 phone * > [email protected] * www.HealthMarkets.com > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
