John Eells wrote:
Edward E. Jaffe wrote:
It's no surprise. The so-called "registry" is still somewhat informal
and not that well known. Hardly anyone at IBM even knows of its
existence. The vast majority of ISV products aren't registered there.
This is *especially* true of products that were written so long ago.
I'm not sure what you mean by "informal." Prefixes must be registered
for IBM products before they are distributed. There's even a corporate
standard. Someone trying to release a product without following it will
learn all about it when the product is submitted to SDF for distribution.
However, looking at what I think is the current prefix list on our
intranet, I can see that, as you observed, few vendors register their
prefixes. I have never understood this. It's to our mutual
benefit--IBM, other vendors, and customers all win--and the price is
right (no charge).
I would imagine many ISV providers prefer to distribute
their products via their own channels, and not feel
"beholden" to IBM (which is a bit disingenous, since
these products rest on z/OS). But there is some sense
of pride, independence, self-reliance in not bothering.
Also, as Ed points out, many vendors may simply not be
aware of the process. And, there is some arrogance in
IBM reserving certain strings for itself when particular
values have been in common use for many years.
I've been in the business a long time, and in our
LE course we talk about registering "facility ID"s,
which are three-character message prefixes, but I
never knew where to go to "register" this. To me,
the main benefit would be to avoid stepping on the
toes of some other product (IBM or other vendor)
in terms of being customer friendly to identify
where messages were originating from.
Kind regards,
-Steve Comstock
The Trainer's Friend, Inc.
http://www.trainersfriend.com
I encourage all software vendors to send [EMAIL PROTECTED] a note to
get started.
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