R. Skorupka wrote: >I just found in COBOL manual a chapter about support for VSAM passwords.
As always, yes, it is still there since my glorious MVS/XA days when I started. >Well, I can understand the PASSWORD clause is still syntax checked, but I was >told that VSAM do dropped support for the password. Indeed. I see this remark too in "DFSMS Using Data Sets": "Recommendation: Do not use VSAM password protection. Instead, use RACF or an equivalent product." Why "recommendation"? I think it is something to do with 'user-security-verification routine' for VSAM, if you *still* choose to use it instead of RACF or ESM. >Is COBOL "language for the future"? Perhaps not. ;-) I think this is backward compatibility to the absolute extreme... Your ancient COBOL full of Egypt hieroglyphs may or may not run on the latest super z toys. ;-D I really wish that for all products, the vendor (IBM for example) says something like this: "We plan to drop feature X in release 5 while we introduce replacement feature Z in release 2" (so you can gradually move from X to Z and get PTFs if you get any nasty surprises while using X as a workaround.) I also really wish that those COBOL developers can write something like this: "Old compiled modules with PASSWORD will still be running fine (backward compatibility blah blah blah), but all new compile attempts with PASSWORD should fail with RC > 4 with some meaningless IGYxxx messages." Same with ISAM, etc. Ok, enough ranting!!!! -) Groete / Greetings Elardus Engelbrecht ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
