How do you rebuild a catalog - copy it to a different catalog, or extract everything , create "define alias.." statement and process those statements through IDCAMS?
Colin On Fri, 21 Nov 2025 at 05:55, Brian Westerman < [email protected]> wrote: > It keeps the Master Catalog clean, and makes sure that any catalog > maintenance changes that may have occurred between the versions (not the > minor releases) will be used to generate the new Master Catalog. It also > forces a re-think on what is and needs to be "in" the Master Catalog. > > I'm not the only one that can put things into the Master at any of the > sites I work with, there are people at the actual site who can update the > Master who normally don't really think about whether something needs to be > there or not. Lots of things change between the time z/OS version 1 came > out and then version 2 now version 3. There have been many changes between > those releases that have benefited the Master Catalog (and catalog in > general). Keeping the same Master for 10 to 20 to 30 years, to me seems > like asking for trouble. And yet, there are sites that brag about having > the same Master Catalog and Usercats from when they started xx years ago. > I think they are probably thinking something along the lines of, "they > still work, why change anything?". > > There is a lot of obsolete stuff in there at almost every site I have been > exposed to. The entire rebuild process takes maybe 15 minutes and I end up > with a pristine Catalog structure. I generally rebuild the User Catalogs > as well, but mostly so I can move them where they "should" be for recovery > purposes. > > The question you asked maybe should have been to ask yourself, "what are > you losing by not rebuilding the Master Catalog"? I realize that people > have probably some very strong feelings on this one way or the other, and > that's their privilege. I believe that occasionally rebuilding the Master > (and the user catalogs) can be beneficial, and when it's been a "log time", > I know it is. Personally I think that some sites don't do it because they > aren't really that confident in their skills, but the perfect time to > rebuild (and reallocate), is when you generated the new system. There > isn't much that can go wrong anyway, but at installation time you have the > time to think about EVERYTHING in a lot more detail, at least you should. > > I probably do more installs of the whole system and all of it's subsystems > than a "normal" (normal is probably not the correct word here) systems > programmer, and I have a extremely long "to do" list of the process (almost > 3,000 steps depending on the subsystems and vendor products involved). I > have seen countless Master Catalog issues that people just "live" with > because they don't see a benefit in fixing it. In my case, I don't even > bother to take the chance that I will prolong a problem. > > In this case, the choice is up to the person who is doing the install. If > that's me, then of course "my way" will be the right way no matter what > anyone else thinks. I have yet to have even one site complain about me > recreating the Catalog(s), and that's a lot of sites. > > Brian > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
