For years my fiercest hot button has been not structural syntax differences among components but the scurrilous practice of introducing a keyword change in one release that is incompatible with the previous release(s). Over the years we've seen this with various products/components. SMS (PDSE-related keywords) and Netview (INITRTN in SSN) come to mind. Such incompatible members cannot be shared among different releases and complicate both forward migration and (godforbid) fallback. It's been a while since one of these bricks has fallen on us, so it appears that IBM's internal politicking has worked.
In one grand instance, Peter Relson was able to promote a major change in one key member, IEASYSxx. A new keyword WARNUND in IEASYSxx does this: if an undefined keyword is encountered, issue a warning message but continue the IPL. It applies only to the contents of IEASYSxx, and it's incumbent on the sysprog to verify that it's really a new keyword and not merely an old one misspelled. If other products/components introduced such support, our lives would be improved. WARNUND for SMS would have saved us a lot of grief moving to z/OS 1.6. And back several times! It would not have helped in the Netview case, where one release required INITRTN while the previous release could not tolerate it. Still, it's the right direction for all products/components. . . J.O.Skip Robinson Southern California Edison Company Electric Dragon Team Paddler SHARE MVS Program Co-Manager 323-715-0595 Mobile 626-302-7535 Office robin...@sce.com -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of Elardus Engelbrecht Sent: Wednesday, August 24, 2016 6:11 AM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: (External):Re: Comments in SYS1.PARMLIB Charles Mills wrote: >Plus, are there not third-party PARMLIB syntax checkers which would have been >broken by the change? There are some syntax checkers from IBM, but only for *certain* parmlib members: CEEPRMxx, LOADxx and GRSRNLXX checked by 'Parmlib Processing tool' and 'Symbolic Parmlib Parser' IKJTSOxx by TSO PARMLIB CHECK(??) BPXPRMxx you use 'SETOMVS SYNTAXCHECK' 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
