You're certainly right, and I'm not an IBM-basher. I think it's a great organization (not without flaws -- no large organization is without large flaws) but a great organization, and the IBM mainframe has provided a rewarding (in several senses of the word) living for me, and I am grateful.
The problem with much computer documentation, including much of z/OS's, is that it is feature- rather than task-oriented. That is, the documentation does a perfect job of answering the question "so, what does the IEABRC macro do and how do you code it?" and a terrible job of answering the question "so, you're facing base register constraint, what do you do?" and "okay, you converted your open code to use jump instructions but you are now getting errors on the system macros, what do you do?" Unfortunately, a real-life user is much more likely to be asking the latter questions. Not a single reference to IEABRC appears in any of the Guide manuals. So you have to know that you need IEABRC to know that IEABRC is the solution. That was my point in the text that you quoted. Another problem, frankly, with the z/OS documentation is the fragmentation. The fragmentation of the documentation -- what is in MVS, what is in JES2/3, what is in DFSMS? -- only makes sense if you already know the answer to the question "does what I want to accomplish have an MVS solution or a JES solution or a DFSMS solution?" Explain to me how anyone who didn't already know would guess that the function to copy a dataset would not be a base part of the operating system (i.e., a part of MVS rather than an "add-on" product, DFSMS)? How would you guess that OPEN would be DFSMS but DYNALLOC would be MVS? Charles -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Gerhard Adam Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2007 7:17 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Macro List/Execute Forms (Was: Need help with Assembler ...) > 1. This is a perfect example of the whole MVS philosophy of documentation, > which seems to be "if you already understand how everything works, then > our > documentation will explain everything to you perfectly." > IMHO, IBM still has some of the best documentation available regardless of how voluminous it might be. I'm sure many people would wish for even more if it were to be available (remember the PLM's?) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
