The reality is that more often than not application programmers on
seeing an error they've never encountered before, don't crack a manual
but consult "higher" authority. After all it is a "system" ABEND, so
surely that's a job for a system programmer -- and system programmers
are the ones who know where to locate all the bizarre error message
explanations as well as knowing which error messages represent the
actual failure and which can be ignored.
In my experience, most of the time the first reader of a "contact
systems programmer" explanation IS a systems programmer. I always found
it highly irritating when that was the only explanation for an error
message. Even a broad general description of what went wrong can
sometimes be helpful in isolating whether it is an application mis-use
of the operating system or an actual problem with system software that
needs to be resolved.
So, IMO it is really unreasonable to expect an application programmer to
be the first one reading a "programmer response" for a message that's
obscure enough that it doesn't have any better explanation than "contact
the system programmer".
Joel C. Ewing
On 10/30/2014 06:25 AM, Peter Relson wrote:
>>> What is missing, which will be corrected, is that the "Programmer
>>> Response" does not have a line such as "for codes that are
>>> described as IBM use only, contact the system programmer".
>> Please don't! That's as bad as "This message is self explanatory."
>> Assume that the person reading it *is* the systems programmer, and
>> tell *him* what action to take, including the diagnostic data that he
>> should report.
> I disagree completely. The expected reader of "programmer response" is an
> application programmer.
> The expected reader of "system programmer response" is the system
> programmer.
>
> The system programmer response is already to contact IBM service. And it's
> rare when the right data to report does not include the console log and
> any dumps, so that does not need to be called out specifically on every
> abend
>
> Peter Relson
> z/OS Core Technology Design
>
--
Joel C. Ewing, Bentonville, AR jcew...@acm.org
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