Hi Gil,
You asked why SYMBOLICRELATE doesn't work. At my site at least, SYM doesn't
work because it drops the alias entry into the same catalog as the base entry,
regardless of what catalog the HLQ should be putting the alias into. Just for
fun I defined a symbolic called &NULL and IPLed my sandbox resulting in (in
part) this:
IEA007I STATIC SYSTEM SYMBOL VALUES 045
&NULL. = ""
I then defined a new SYM alias:
DEF ALIAS(NAME(SYS1.REX) SYM(RRP.&NULL.JCL))
IDC0001I FUNCTION COMPLETED, HIGHEST CONDITION CODE WAS 0
My SYS1 datasets are normally defined in the master catalog - I don't use
multi-level aliasing. I then tried to find/use SYS1.REX using standard catalog
searching and got "not found". I dumped the user catalog that has RRP.JCL in
it and I found SYS1.REX in the same catalog. Here are the relevant entries:
LISTC CAT(CATALOG.USERCAT.TSO1) ALL
NONVSAM ------- RRP.JCL
VOLUMES
VOLSER------------SFG001 DEVTYPE------X'3010200F'
ASSOCIATIONS--------(NULL)
ATTRIBUTES
ALIAS --------- SYS1.REX
HISTORY
RELEASE----------------2 CREATION--------2022.087
ASSOCIATIONS
SYMBOLIC-RRP.&NULL.JCL
RESOLVED-RRP.JCL
So it looks like we're still stuck with the SYM alias being in the same catalog
as the base entry. I did not try using the SYMBOL as the HLQ of the dataset
name. Perhaps that would resolve correctly but the way I read the "managing
catalogs" manual, there was no such restriction. That is, of course, unless
I'm using SYM completely wrong which is possible, because I've never used it
before playing with it today.
Rex
-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> On Behalf Of
Paul Gilmartin
Sent: Monday, March 28, 2022 1:20 PM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: IDCAMS ALIAS vs a symbolic link?
On Mon, 28 Mar 2022 15:27:22 +0000, Seymour J Metz wrote:
>He's looking for an alias without the restriction of being in the same
>catalog.
>
What's wrong with SYMBOLICRELATE?
>That would be useful for people who haven't set things up to exploit
>SYMBOLICRELATE, but I doubt that IBM will be willing to do it.
>
The simple RFE would be that the restriction that the related name contain an
"&" be removed.
It strikes me as an manifestation of a Catalog mindset that z/OS supports "$"
symbol expansion in symlinks. Solaris met a similar need with symbols in mount
maps.
--
gil
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