> For example, without having done an exhaustive analysis, I'd guess 
> that all the PI fields in the CVT other than CVTUSER are intended to
> be read-only. 

It's also not safe to assume that you're the only one modifying, e.g.,
CVTUSER, TCBUSER.

BTDT,GTS (no tee shirt, just the scars.)


--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3

________________________________________
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> on behalf of 
Peter Relson <rel...@us.ibm.com>
Sent: Thursday, June 13, 2019 8:26 AM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: What happens if an SMF exit modifies the SMF record?

<snip>
> due to security and integrity of the SMF records themselves, IBM is not
talking much about it.

Security by obscurity?
</snip>

No. These are updates by authorized programs. Neither security nor
integrity is a factor.

One ought to be asking for what reason an exit routine would update an SMF
record. Can it? Sure. Should it? Usually not.

Most programming interfaces (far from all, of course) are intended to be
for read-only but only rarely is that explicitly stated. For example,
without having done an exhaustive analysis, I'd guess that all the PI
fields in the CVT other than CVTUSER are intended to be read-only.
Probably one ought to go with "if it's not obvious that a field is
intended to be written into, then don't write into it (or ask for the
documentation to make it clear one way or another)"

Long ago I had hoped to gain traction for indicating that a PI field was
read-only vs read/write (such as placing that information within the
external classification section of the macro prolog which in turn is used
within the data areas books). Obviously that hope did not come to
fruition.

Peter Relson
z/OS Core Technology Design


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