Tom Marchant wrote:
On Mon, 18 Jan 2016 09:04:53 -0500, John Eells wrote:
- You can use SYMBOLICRELATE on DEFINE ALIAS to point to the catalog
thusly named in the master catalog on the production system.
There used to be a requirement that the alias and the data set name be in
the same catalog. I see in Managing Catalogs that the requirement has been
lifted in z/OS 2.2 for SYMBOLICRELATE. That's something that I hadn't
noticed. Thanks for calling attention to it, John.
The OP is z/OS 1.13 and 2.1, though, so it doesn't help him, unless the
requirement was lifted earlier and not documented until 2.2.
SYMBOLICRELATE was originally implemented at my request to make it
easier to do subsystem software migration when I worked in ServerPac
Design, some time ago.
I believe the abilities to use SYMBOLICRELATE to point to a user catalog
that itself resides on a volume other than the master catalog volume,
and have that usercatalog point to data sets on any volume, were there
from its inception many releases ago (well before z/OS V1.13). Thus,
one may have:
- A master catalog on volume MCAT, with a user catalog connector alias
defined using SYMBOLICRELATE that points to the entry for...
- A user catalog on volume UCAT, which contains entries for...
- Data sets on volume ANYVOL.
This does not actually conflict with the requirement you mention (and
which is documented in prior levels of Access Method Services for
Catalogs). The catalog entry for the user catalog and the entry for the
catalog connector alias defined using SYMBOLICRELATE must indeed both be
in the same catalog--namely, the master catalog. Otherwise, Catalog
could not find the user catalog or relate an alias to it to begin with.
I double-checked with DFSMS Catalog Development to make sure this
remained true after it was originally implemented, and so far as they
know, it has not changed since then. They even tried it out on a V2.1
system they have handy just to prove it worked.
What did change in z/OS V2.2 is whether the catalog search was
reoriented to (start with) the master catalog for data set entries that
use SYMBOLICRELATE when found in user catalogs, which relieves the
previously-documented restriction for *data set aliases*. This was the
announcement text:
"For data set aliases with symbolic-related names, the system is
designed to reorient the search with the master catalog or the
appropriate user catalog."
Note that this change applies only to data set aliases, not usercatalog
connector aliases. For a user catalog connector alias to be resolved,
the entry for the user catalog itself must still also be in the master
catalog.
--
John Eells
IBM Poughkeepsie
ee...@us.ibm.com
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