VBS does NOT say all blocks are the same size.  That is FBS.  VBS is SPANNED, 
FBS is STANDARD.

As for appending to a data set (MOD) - You can always do it to a VBS, but very 
rarely, if ever, to a FBS.  A short block in a FBS file signals EOF.  Even if 
there is additional data after the short block, a well behaving program will 
not read past the short block.

Chris Blaicher
Principal Software Engineer, Software Development
Syncsort Incorporated
50 Tice Boulevard, Woodcliff Lake, NJ 07677
P: 201-930-8260  |  M: 512-627-3803
E: [email protected]


-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf 
Of Paul Gilmartin
Sent: Monday, June 10, 2013 4:03 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: I/O Optimization

On Mon, 10 Jun 2013 17:43:58 +0000, DASDBILL2 wrote:
>
>Spanned means that a single logical record might span multiple physical 
>blocks, but the way it is implemented results in having all block sizes be the 
>same, except for possibly the last one, which might be short.
>
Is uniform lengths a requirement?  Do any applications rely on being able to 
calculate a cylinder and track address within a VBS data set?
Is any error reported if an interior block is short?  Does this mean one can't 
append (MOD) to a VBS data set?  What happens if after writing the last segment 
of a logical record the block is not filled up to BLKSIZE but fewer bytes are 
available than the length of a SDW?
I suppose using null segments might relax some of these constraints.
By "the way it is implemented" are you referring to the behavior of QSAM?

-- gil

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