It keeps the Master Catalog clean, and makes sure that any catalog maintenance changes that may have occurred between the versions (not the minor releases) will be used to generate the new Master Catalog. It also forces a re-think on what is and needs to be "in" the Master Catalog.
I'm not the only one that can put things into the Master at any of the sites I work with, there are people at the actual site who can update the Master who normally don't really think about whether something needs to be there or not. Lots of things change between the time z/OS version 1 came out and then version 2 now version 3. There have been many changes between those releases that have benefited the Master Catalog (and catalog in general). Keeping the same Master for 10 to 20 to 30 years, to me seems like asking for trouble. And yet, there are sites that brag about having the same Master Catalog and Usercats from when they started xx years ago. I think they are probably thinking something along the lines of, "they still work, why change anything?". There is a lot of obsolete stuff in there at almost every site I have been exposed to. The entire rebuild process takes maybe 15 minutes and I end up with a pristine Catalog structure. I generally rebuild the User Catalogs as well, but mostly so I can move them where they "should" be for recovery purposes. The question you asked maybe should have been to ask yourself, "what are you losing by not rebuilding the Master Catalog"? I realize that people have probably some very strong feelings on this one way or the other, and that's their privilege. I believe that occasionally rebuilding the Master (and the user catalogs) can be beneficial, and when it's been a "log time", I know it is. Personally I think that some sites don't do it because they aren't really that confident in their skills, but the perfect time to rebuild (and reallocate), is when you generated the new system. There isn't much that can go wrong anyway, but at installation time you have the time to think about EVERYTHING in a lot more detail, at least you should. I probably do more installs of the whole system and all of it's subsystems than a "normal" (normal is probably not the correct word here) systems programmer, and I have a extremely long "to do" list of the process (almost 3,000 steps depending on the subsystems and vendor products involved). I have seen countless Master Catalog issues that people just "live" with because they don't see a benefit in fixing it. In my case, I don't even bother to take the chance that I will prolong a problem. In this case, the choice is up to the person who is doing the install. If that's me, then of course "my way" will be the right way no matter what anyone else thinks. I have yet to have even one site complain about me recreating the Catalog(s), and that's a lot of sites. Brian ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
