In a recent note, Bruce Black said: > Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2006 10:04:44 -0500 > > Back in the days of CVOL catalogs, the rules were enforced almost by > default, since a CVOL is a hierarchical structure, where each level in > the hierarchy corresponds to one index level in the dataset name (thus > the name "index level"). The max size of each level was 8 characters > and invalid characters or imbedded spaces caused structure errors. > What's a structure error? My understanding is that CVOL catalogs exploited the facilities of CKD DASD, using the index levels as the key fields. Of course, the length of the key field imposes the restriction that an index level can't be longer than 8 or shorter than 1 character. But why any restriction for "invalid characters or imbedded spaces"? Must a key field contain no spaces, etc.?
> In ICF catalogs, dsnames are stored as a single 44 character string, so > theoretically any string can be cataloged, even if it doesn't meet the > rules. In the past, syntax checking was done in various components but > you could bypass them. As Mark T said, there is now an option, enabled > by default, to syntax check dsnames in CATALOG. > I'll restate my objection to the practice of "various components" enforcing syntactic rules that are properly in the jurisdiction of another component. The advent of ICF catalogs should have provided an excellent opportunity to relax an onerous syntactic restriction and allow, for example, HFS data sets to imbed exact images of the associated UNIX directories. Alas, the chaos of vigilante enforcement made this so impractical that the syntax checking option was provided. And I remain curious: with syntax checking enabled, will it continue to be possible to uncatalog/delete/rename data sets having nonconforming names, provided that at least the new name is conformant? -- gil -- StorageTek INFORMATION made POWERFUL ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
