Alan, let me give you a less crabby response. I admire IBM and its products, and the mainframe has provided a good living for me.
The support center would be an inappropriate resource, based on my experience. I believe they do not "help with problems" -- they "resolve defects." Had I called them up and said "what the heck does this message mean?" they would have (politely) told me to go away. OTOH, this listserve was great! The people here told me, in several fits and starts, what the message indicated. Was it "authoritative"? No, by the listserve's nature, it was not. However, I was able to take the advice given here and correct the error, which is for me the ultimate "authority." Could I have tricked the Support Center into solving the problem? Probably -- called them up and fibbed "I have a DFSMS defect -- this perfectly good dataset and my perfectly good QSAM program won't read it." With any luck, they would eventually have come around to telling me that DFSMS was either WAD, or almost WAD, and my dataset was missing a BLKSIZE. They might have issued a PTF, which would not "solve" my problem -- my program would just fail with an S013 rather than a Command Reject. I would still have had to change my code to "solve" the problem (and I'm not for a second objecting to that). This listserve required a note from me that took 5 or 10 minutes to compose, and 53 minutes later I had the essential clues from Bill Fairchild (thank you, Bill!). I doubt that the Support Center would have done as well. It is, after all, set up to serve a different need. Can you criticize me, OTOH, on the basis that things will never get better if people don't report problems? Guilty as charged. Frankly, the hours in my day are limited, and the time I have available for good deeds I allocate to causes that are more worthy of charity (IMHO) than IBM. IBM has dozens of employees who read this listserve. If it is not worth it in IBM's management's view to seek out problems here and put in the effort necessary to solve them "correctly," then why should it be worth it to me? Charles -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Alan Altmark Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2007 4:55 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: What is "command reject" trying to tell me? On Mon, 22 Jan 2007 08:33:11 -0800, Charles Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >This problem is not unsolvable. I am not asking how to solve it. I have >solved it. The points of my posts were > >1. Initially, could someone who is more up-to-date on channel programs than >I please decode the CCW gibberish for me? That was done. >2. And then, why the heck can't DFSMS put out a message like "illegal >blocksize" rather than a message like >8000000000AC0004042084000000000000000000FF010F0000004EA00000AC00 FAILING >PARAMETER LIST DATA = 8680000400AC000000AC000000000000. You guys wonder why >the mainframe has fallen from favor and has a reputation for requiring the >labor of guys with 40 years of experience to parse its entrails? Look no >further than this message. Did you talk to the Support Center? No one here can answer your question authoritatively, but many have expressed the opinion that you should be getting S013 abend, not a unit check. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
