John - Thanks for the update on the 4GB limit for catalogs. I had not seen this yet & it's definitely good to hear that it's finally going to be resolved.
As for your other points, it appears to me that we are in complete agreement. >-- Haven't seen where anyone's mentioned that catalogs are standard KSDS's & >-- are there for limited to 4GB's. Is that not still true? >A SHARE requirement was submitted to relieve the 4GB limit for catalogs. >(Yes ... the process does work!) This appears to be addressed in z/OS 1.12. >Check the announcement preview. >-- You also want to consider recoverability issues - if all your production >-- aliases are in one catalog and there's a catalog error (and they do still >-- happen), this could result in ALL of your production applications being >-- down. One might argue increasing the # of catalogs increases the risk of >-- catalog errors, but it also limits your exposure and can shorten the >-- amount of time being spent in recovery. > Recovery is the major reason NOT to place all of your entries in a single > catalog. When that one catalog breaks (it's not if, but when), think about > how you will manage to perform recovery. Can you do this without relying on > some cataloged dataset somewhere? (There are ways; but, you need to plan > for this event.) > Another consideration may be what happens when that catalog fills, for > whatever reason. (Lots of dead CAs, say.) You may not be able to catalog > anything new, until you re-organize the catalog. Can you afford that outage > to your entire shop? The above was also a very good point to mention. As it happens, I had this happen just recently. We use OpenTec's TapeCopy/VDR product to create copies of virtual tapes to be vaulted offsite. The naming standard we implemented on the copies puts them all into the same catalog and results in a 'creep' in the resulting dataset names - meaning the space at the beginning of this catalog generally does not get re-used. After 4 or 5 years, it finally filled up on me. Because this catalog contains only the alias for these tapes, I could easily rebuild it during the day outside the batch window when our DR copies are made without affecting any applications. Needless to say, I've also added a yearly tickler to take a look at this catalog to see what shape it's in. ddk This e-mail message and all attachments transmitted with it may contain legally privileged and/or confidential information intended solely for the use of the addressee(s). If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any reading, dissemination, distribution, copying, forwarding or other use of this message or its attachments is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete this message and all copies and backups thereof. Thank you. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
