In the 80's a byte of DASD savings could be thousands of dollars. > -----Original Message----- > From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> On > Behalf Of Phil Smith III > Sent: Wednesday, April 22, 2020 9:12 AM > To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU > Subject: Re: Here we go again; > > As others have suggested, many companies do still have SSNs stored as > packed decimal. So sure, a namespace expansion is possible, but it's a bigger > change than one might think, however it's done. I've even seen at least one > company who stored them as binary! I sure hope someone got a big bonus > for saving that byte... > > > > > > Peter Farley wrote: > > >There are also many non-human entities like corporations that use the > same SSN value space. > > > > >There are a LOT of those . . . and they spring up and fade away at a rate far > higher than human births and deaths. > > > > They use the same namespace--that is, if your SSN is 123-45-6789, an estate > or business could also have that number. Since they're uses for different > things, it's more that they happened (!) to choose the same format than that > they're "the same". (And actually they're theoretically formatted differently: > an EIN is xx-xxxxxxx vs. the SSN xxx-xx-xxxx, not that most folks store them > with the hyphens.) > > > > ...phsiii > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to > lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
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