Here comes my $0.02 worth. You can use the DEFINE ALIAS with "NAME" (the alias name HLQ.BAR.COMMON) and "SYMBOLICRELATE" the actual data set name, but with a SYSTEM SYMBOL in it, HLQ.BAR.&BB, or even, HLQ.&FOOBAR..&BARFOO where &FOOBAR="FOO" or "BAR" and &BARFOO = "A","B","C"..... See "DFSMS Managing Catalogs" for an example. Chapter 2, "Extended Alias Support"
Now this only works or makes sense if you can change a SYSTEM SYMBOL easily. Al Nims Systems Admin/Programmer 3 Information Technology University of Florida (352) 273-1298 -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Charles Mills Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2014 7:49 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Dataset alias advice I've never used dataset aliases. (Well, I'm sure I have; it would probably be more correct to say "I have never been involved with the administration of dataset aliases.") I have a situation where I am going to have several sets of datasets; one set each for "situation" A, one for B, one for C, and so forth. So I might have HLQ.FOO.A HLQ.FOO.B HLQ.FOO.C etc. HLQ.BAR.A etc. In many cases these will be PDSes with multiple members. For *some* of these sets, the A, B and C PDSes will be the same. I only need the A, B, and C to make the big picture scheme work. These are for my own use, basically -- this is not for an entire datacenter. Question: Does the use of aliases make sense? Let's say HLQ.BAR is identical across A, B and C. Should I make one HLQ.BAR.COMMON and alias it as .A, .B and .C? Or is that overkill for a simple one-person situation? Should I just make three identical PDSes and not over-complicate the problem? Disk space is not the issue -- these are relatively small datasets. I guess it just bothers my engineering desire for elegance to have three identical datasets when I could have three pointers to one dataset. I guess "not mucking up the maintenance" -- changing one and failing to change the others -- is also a possible concern. Charles ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
