>Regarding the controversy over whether this new functionality might >break old programs: when I get called in the middle of the night, my >first question is, "what changed?" If you change your JCL, and then >your program breaks, YOU BROKE IT. If I have an old program in >production today that expects a 16 byte parm, I could change the JCL >and pass it, say, 50 bytes. Nothing in the operating system today will >prevent me from doing that. If the program can't handle 50 bytes, >then it breaks, and _ I _ was the cause, not the OS. If you can't >control changes to your production JCL, then by all means turn off >the new functionality (when it is finally available) globally.
You're assuming the program will break. I'm afraid of the case it doesn't break but run with incorrect data. Sure, the 16-byte case you mentioned isn't too different *but* the architectural limit (still) is 100 bytes not 50, not 16, programs are expected to reserve 100 bytes for the PARM. 50 instead of 16 bytes would not overwrite data outside of the 100 byte variable. Peter Hunkeler Senior IT Specialist, IBM zSeries Technical Sales Support, Switzerland ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
