Your reasons are some of those that prompted the creation of PDSEGEN.
Lionel B. Dyck <>< Website: https://www.lbdsoftware.com Github: https://github.com/lbdyck “Worry more about your character than your reputation. Character is what you are, reputation merely what others think you are.” - - - John Wooden -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> On Behalf Of Schmitt, Michael Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2023 9:59 AM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Re: Two related member generation questions Lack of better member generation support is the reason that my team is still using PDS instead of PDS/E. We *like* the ability to easily retrieve previous and deleted versions of members from the PDS "gas". (This is helped because we have a home-written ISPF panel that lets you display, search, filter, browse, compare, restore, and rename previous versions of members that are still in the PDS directory.) Another reason is that the way the PDSE v2 member generation limit works is that it is a limit on every member. If you set it to keep 10, then it keeps 10 generations of EVERY member, forever. But what if this is your main source library, were only a small fraction of the member have been changed in the last decade? 10 generations would be too many for the older members but not enough for the newer, more frequently changed members. I opened an Idea for this: "Request to add more flexibility to PDSE Member Generations". Status is "Future consideration" https://ibm-z-hardware-and-operating-systems.ideas.ibm.com/ideas/ZOS-I-2764 And another reason is that it isn't easy to create a data set that copies the attributes of a PDSE, because JCL LIKE doesn't copy the PDSE Version and MAXGENS attributes. I created another Idea related to this: JCL LIKE for PDSE Version and MAXGENS, also with status "Future consideration": https://ibm-z-hardware-and-operating-systems.ideas.ibm.com/ideas/ZOS-I-2788 One final note: I have a suspicion that IBM has been eschewing enhancements to ISPF in favor of adding the functionality to File Manager instead. -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> On Behalf Of Lionel B. Dyck Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2023 9:47 AM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Re: Two related member generation questions True enough - and one more thing is that while IBM supports member generations, they DO NOT support them via JCL, dynamic allocation, or the majority of their utilities/tools. And don't even try to find them in zExplorer, ZOWE, or ZOAU (or is it ZAOU?). Lionel B. Dyck <>< Website: https://www.lbdsoftware.com/ Github: https://github.com/lbdyck “Worry more about your character than your reputation. Character is what you are, reputation merely what others think you are.” - - - John Wooden -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> On Behalf Of Jay Maynard Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2023 9:44 AM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Re: Two related member generation questions SMP used to do this, and ISTR SMP/E does as well. On Tue, May 30, 2023 at 9:34 AM Schmitt, Michael <michael.schm...@dxc.com> wrote: > And IMS. MFS Formats have non-display and lower-case letters in the > member names. > > Such as: > > ."wACOV0 > 07ACCDEF > 2F613650 > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> On > Behalf Of Steve Thompson > Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2023 8:19 AM > To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU > Subject: Re: Two related member generation questions > > I may not have edited these posts correctly for this, but, I thought I > should point out that an IBM product does create "illegal" (per JCL) > member names. And that would be Netview. > > In years gone by I had seen member names that were really "odd" > and found out that it was Netview that was creating them. > > So yes, an assembler programmer could do this and have done this, > because it has been done. > > Steve Thompson > > On 5/30/2023 12:11 AM, Paul Gilmartin wrote: > > > > Can't an Assembler programmer using STOW create PDS members with > > names beginning with '+', '-', '0', 'π', ... just about anything? I > > don't > believe it's proper > > for higher layers such as JCL to introduce syntactic restrictions > harsher than > > those of core layers. The only member name prohibited is 8X'FF', > indicaring > > the end of a PDS directory. > > > > How do LM services accessible, e.g. through REXX support member > "generations"? > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send > email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN > > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send > email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN > -- Jay Maynard ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
