I have to apologise in advance if I ruffle any feathers. If you are married to or see any logic in IBM's policies of N+/-3 and date related OS releases then you should probably just go to the next IBM-MAIN record and ignore me.
I've been watching this thread and I am amazed at some of the responses. I do realize that IBM has stated the N+3 policy (which is more of a guideline), but I can't believe that many of the responses went as far as to say the upgrade would be not supported. Supported by whom? That's absolutely silly, first of all, (and lets have a show of hands), how many of you ever have had an issue converting within the N+3 and actually had IBM drop everything to jump right on your problem? I'm betting that no hands are showing because it just doesn't happen that way. Has anyone ever called IBM oustide of the N+3 and said something like, "I'm converting from z/os 1.2 to 1.6 and I have a problem", and had IBM tell you, "sorry, we don't support what you're doing"? No, because it doesn't happen, not in the real world, and not even in IBM's hallowed halls would that even be considered as a valid response. (nor would the "drop everything" one). There is a "world of guidelines", and the "real world", and in the real world, people don't have the time or money to throw away on doing two conversions (1.4-1.7 then 1.7-1.8) when only one is necessary. Actually, I've found that getting them to commit to do even one OS conversion is difficult. And I can't see where it's even necessary to ever do two. First, what is it about 1.6 makes it any difference (conversion wise) from 1.5?, the answer is, very little, so why should it even count as a bump in the N+3 road? It's not like the person who started the thread said that they wanted to convert from 1.4 to 1.6 even though 1.8 will be available. I could see the stupidity in that decision, but that's not what they asked. They just wanted to know if it could be done, the answer is YES, and if you want to chide them to stay within N+3, then that's fine, but don't pretend they can't convert to 1.8 from 1.4 because it's not within N+3, that's just too silly for words. Actually, there was probably nothing in 1.5 or 1.6 that they wanted anyway or they would have probably made the effort to go there int he first place back in 2004 or 2005. It's very nice that everyone is willing to offer an opinion, after all that's what IBM-MAIN is for, but it should not be spouted as fact. So what if there is an N=3 policy, does that mean that they can't co-exist? Of course not, what parts, if any, would not work together? Not what MIGHT not work, but what would REALLY be the issues? Guess what, there aren't any that really can't be addressed very simply. Even though I have done over 200 operating system upgrades, even my information should still only be considered an opinon, and I can honestly tell you that IBM's guidelines and what I have done in the past with respect to conversions from different OS levels have very little in common. I have never had a failure, and I can honestly state that I have never even run into an insurmountable problem in any of the conversions I've been part of. On the other hand, your expectations have to be realistic, and you have to be more prepared than a boy scout. In 2004 I converted a site from MVS/SP1 to Z/os 1.5 directly, and while there are some things that you can't share, there were actually very few issues at all. They went from a 4341 to a Z/800 at the same time, and it was one of the simplest migrations I've been part of. That doesn't mean that no problems arose, just that they were not insurmountable, and IBM's support policy was not a factor in anything that we did. Never once have I called IBM, and I have had a lot of "out of support" OS upgrades, that they ever told me that they would not work the problem. On the other hand, I didn't expect them to generate any PTF's for the release I was converting from either, no one ever should, certainly IBM isn't going to willingly do it because there is no revenue in it for them. Personally, I wouldn't do it either. I do believe in staying current, but not all sites can afford to do that, for one reason or another. I would guess that any site that doesn't have time (or money) to get from z/os 1.4 to 1.7 in a few years, isn't going to be able to all of a sudden go to their upper management and say, "you know what? IBM's policy is to only let us go to 1.7, so you need to let us allocate 2X the man-hours for conversion and extra test time to do it and still go to 1.8 afterwards". In the real world, it just doesn't happen that way, and it doesn't need to. While I do believe in staying current, if there is nothing in the next release of the OS that you need or will benefit greatly from, then there is very little incentive to move to it. These conversions aren't free, which gets back to my deep seeded issue with IBM's date oriented release policy instead of a "feature related" one. I had a problem with's IBM's decision to change the release level based on date rather than new features, and I still do. If we begin with z/os 1.4 then there are some mildly nice features of 1.5, and 1.6 didn't even change JES2 in any way, it's the same version, (even says 1.5 internally), but you could have bundled 1.5, 1.6 and 1.7 together and still not come up with enough new features to really warrant a new release. (well, maybe all together), but individually, you didn't really get much. I'm sorry if I offended anyone with my little speech, but I did apologise in advance:} Brian ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
