On 12/1/2005 1:07 AM, Joe Zitzelberger wrote:
On Nov 30, 2005, at 12:20 PM, Walt Farrell wrote:
Unfortunately, since different systems in a sysplex (or sharing the
spool) could have very different times and dates, they could get very
unexpected results if we let those symbols be used in batch job JCL.
Suppose the job converted on a system where the date is today, and ran
on a system where the date is several days, or weeks, ago. (The
normal case is to have them very close, of course. And the more
likely unusual case is to have them simply a few hours off. But
nothing requires that the dates/times be anywhere close across
systems, that I know of.)
Walt
That answer is just barely passible for dates and times in a compulsive
case, but what about other symbols where there is no ambiguity.
Without getting hung up on the "system symbols", there are plenty of
symbols of the &SYSUID type that could be painlessly provided by IBM
that would make JCL a little bit nicer to work with. Things like
&JOBNAME, &JOBNUMBER, &STEPNAME, &PROCNAME, &NESTLEVEL and others are
fully resolvable without any ambiguity about the converting or executing
system. What about those?
Why does IBM even bother dangling &SYSUID in front of us if that is all
they are ever going to provide?
That's a very different question, Joe. And I, personally, would agree
that it could be useful to have symbols like those available.
Feel free to submit a SHARE requirement asking for that.
Walt
----------------------------------------------------------------------
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
