No, I have no business case. I was speaking philosophically. It is the same 
advice I would give an associate who was thinking of developing an operating 
system. It's not an excuse for anything. I make extensive use of PDSE where I 
find them appropriate.

And it's just my opinion. You can debate whether an STC constitutes "internal 
OS code" and you can certainly debate my assertion that use by COBOL implies 
that it "should" be internal. (COBOL requires LE and LE is certainly not built 
into the MVS kernel.)

WRT the use of PDSE for SYS1.NUCLEUS and so forth, I admit to being ignorant of 
the details of the IPL process and of the internal "guts" of PDSE, but I would 
think building read-only, internal-use-only PDSE support into NIP or whatever 
would not be an unreasonable task.

In any event, it still seems to me that after 26 years or whatever that IBM 
should have solved the PDSE problems, which obviously linger, despite 
assertions to the contrary. (As I have told software product support staff when 
they reported to me: "if the customer *thinks* he has a problem then there *is* 
a problem.") VSAM replaced ISAM -- how come PDSE has never gotten "good enough" 
to replace PDS?

Charles

-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf 
Of Tom Marchant
Sent: Friday, September 13, 2013 4:45 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: PDS/E, Shared Dasd, and COBOL V5

On Fri, 13 Sep 2013 11:44:56 -0400, Charles Mills wrote:

>I have to say I agree. If PDSEs are fundamental to the OS, then 
>internal OS code should support them.

It does.  But not early in the IPL process.  In fact, there are important 
system components that are designed to use facilities that are available only 
in program objects, not in load modules.  Those system components cannot reside 
in a PDS.

>If they're not fundamental, then COBOL should not be requiring them.

That is an excuse for you to be hesitant to use PDSE for your applications. 
Not a very good one, IMO.  Do you have a business case that requires that PDSE 
support be available earlier in the IPL process?

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