> David: Life's tough at high altitudes. Newbie learn what you need. Open a manual. Play in a > 2nd level system with SFS. Create your own filepool. I know time is a precious commodity but > z/VM isn't a toy.
All true at a high level. But, I think we're going to have to struggle very soon with a number of these usability issues. Note that in recent IBM presentations on VM futures, CMS investment seldom or never appears. Many of these functions (SFS, directory management, backup, etc) depend on knowledge of CMS -- most of us on this mailing list survived the situations that lead up to the development of these various Good Things, so we have the context and the skill set to support them. We're entering a time when that context is missing in the next generation of system administrators, and we no longer have CMS users as the primary focus of VM. I believe we need to ask the question of usability improvement for these functions. The skills are no longer there, and we are focusing VM on serving a community that wants to develop them about as much as they want to learn JCL. Telling someone to RTFM -- well, they'd have to find the right FM first. Perhaps I'm worrying about the "system after next" again. I think it's a question that we need to start to think about, though.
