That may have been cool long ago in a galaxy far away, but after the advent of static system symbols it became unnecessary complexity. Not worth getting rid of if you're already doing it, but it's not the way to go for a new data center.
-- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3 ________________________________________ From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@listserv.ua.edu> on behalf of Dan D <zos.j...@gmail.com> Sent: Saturday, May 5, 2018 11:01 AM To: IBM-MAIN@listserv.ua.edu Subject: Re: IEFA107I when pointing to dataset alias A very long time ago (over 30 years ago) I worked for a service bureau.\ They had specific naming standards for their libraries when products were installed (ie. SYSx.product.V01R03.LOADLIB). We couldn't have our customers continually changing JCL unless they wanted a different version than what was installed so we created a system tool called "Virtual Dataset Names". This worked very similar to how ALIAS names works although there was no "must be in the same catalog" restriction. When the system was IPL'd (or later via a special operator command) a table was loaded into CSA that contained the REAL dataset name, the VIRTUAL name and the various versions that were available. One of the versions was marked as the default. We used the IGG026DU catalog front-end exit (which I believe is now used by DFSMSHSM) to intercept catalog lookups and replace the REAL name that is being located with the VIRTUAL name. It would scan SWA and check if an ACCT= was specified on the EXEC statement. If so, the 1st operand was used to overriding VERION for all datasets within that step. Example: //step50 exec pgm=iefbr15,ACCT=V5R3 //DD1 dd dsn=sys1.sortlib,disp=shr If SYS1.SORTLIB is in the table and it's virtual name is PROD.?.SORTLIB and it had a list of versions, V1R0 being the alias, DD1 would be translated to PROD.V5R3.SORTLIB as ACCT=V5R3 was specified. If it wasn't DD1 would be PROD.V1R0.SORTLIB. Our customers loved this as they could test NEW versions of products before they became the default. If someone has the time, maybe they could take on this project and re-write this cool tool ;-) Dan ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
