In one sense, TSO userids have always 'tied up' 8 bytes, but the first byte by convention has always been the length of the actual userid in the next 7 characters. This structure is utterly pervasive throughout TSO(/E). Not just IBM processes but countless RYO and third party processes as well. Even the structure of UADS for a user is set of multiple members named as userid+digit, which requires an id of 7 characters or less.
The motivation for the increased length seems to me entirely a matter of responding (dare I say catering?) to grousing from the non-mainframe world where in many shops, the TSO id has to be different from the all other applications that allow a full 8 characters. I don't find that requirement offensive because in many shops, TSO ids are assigned by a pattern representing department affiliation, where the first few characters indicate the users' function. This actually simplifies access rules, since all, say, STORxxx users can be granted elevated DASD management authority. If the person changes function, you want the userid to lose the old authority in favor of whatever comes next. I've never been a promoter of increased userid length because I don't think it's worth the enormous trouble it will cause. I think the vast majority of shops will refrain from pulling the 8-character trigger and live comfortable with the world as it's always been. . . J.O.Skip Robinson Southern California Edison Company Electric Dragon Team Paddler SHARE MVS Program Co-Manager 323-715-0595 Mobile 626-543-6132 Office ⇐=== NEW robin...@sce.com -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of Paul Gilmartin Sent: Monday, February 06, 2017 11:12 AM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: (External):Re: Eight-character TSO Userid Support On 2017-02-06, at 08:29, John McKown wrote: > On Mon, Feb 6, 2017 at 8:45 AM, Edward Gould <edgould1...@comcast.net> > wrote: >> >> Thanks, I wonder how much IBM and user code is going to have to >> change to allow this? >> I suppose it depends on whether your installation exploits the feature. DSN prefix? SUBMIT? OUTPUT? (I'd prefer to see SUBMIT modified to relax the F80 limit.) > Very true. I know of a lot of control block which look something like: > > USERID DS 0CL8 > USERIDL DS FL1 > USERIDV DS CL7 > Why in that order rather than the reverse? All in all, it's underreaching to break compatibility for a 15% increase. While 8 is a pervasive enterprise convention, many OSes (Linux? OS X? (I just succeeded with 32)) allow far more. Better to allow a long login name to map to a short UID. -- gil ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
