On Thu, 3 Nov 2011 11:57:43 -0500, McKown, John wrote: >Does anybody use SYMBOLICREATE to create aliases so that >the actual DSN can automatically change based on a static >system symbol?
I'm with Mark Jacobs and Mary Anne Matyaz on this. I've been out of doing systems programming and doing product development for a few years now, but at my previous shop, I used it extensively. I had one product that needed maintenance nearly every week and frequently the maintenance was bad and needed to be backed off. SYMBOLICRELATE made my life much easier. >My manager likes for product libraries to have the >release/maintenance as a node in the DSN. That's kind of what I did, but with weekly maintenance, I had to come up with something that was much more granular. The symbols wouldn't have meant much to my manager, but it was easy for me to tell which libraries and target zones were what. >But this means that we need to make JCL changes when we >upgrade. Not with a data set alias. >Or we need to put the executable libraries in the LNKLST. The product that I mentioned above has several data sets. Panels, Clsits, skelteons, tables, procs, load libraries (one of them APF authorized). The load library went in the linklist and APF list, not using the alias (you can't do that) but using the same symbol that is used in the SYMBOLICRELATE. The product also had a subsystem. My process was: 1. Clone the target zone. 2. Apply the maintenance. 3. Add a library to the APF list. 4. Stop the subsystem. 5. Use SYMUPDTE (now IEASYMUP) to update the symbol. 6. Create and activate a new LINKLIST set. 7. Start the subsystem. 8. Update IEASYMxx when I'm satisfied that we will keep it up. Backing off required only steps 4-7. >But is it better to create a normal ALIAS without the >maintenance level and simply reDEFINE the alias when I >upgrade? Rather than change the IEASYMnn member of >PARMLIB. Better how? If the data sets are cataloged in a shared catalog, changing normal aliases means that you have no choice but to upgrade all of the systems to the newer level at the same time. Is that good or bad? If a product has only one data set and it is not cataloged in a shared catalog, you might consider normal aliases to be just as good, but I can't see how it is better. Do you have complicated change control procedures that you have to go through every time you update PARMLIB but not when you update catalogs? -- Tom Marchant ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
