On Mon, 16 Jun 2014 11:44:53 -0500, Tony's Basement Computer wrote: >This brings back memories of a small zOS shop I worked at in the late 90s. >They routinely built user catalogs whose entire name was 8 characters or >less, and intentionally happened to match a high level qualifier(s). Their >reasoning for this practice was that they did not have to define aliases. >This shop supported a number of retail businesses whose datasets were all >peculiar to their business, each branch having its own user catalog. When I >inquired about the why and wherefore the response was "it's too much trouble >to define an alias." Personally I never thought it was all that tough a >task. > OTOH, what benefit results from using aliases? Aliases seem to introduce needless complexity. Is the benefit in having fewer user catalogs, but more aliases in the master catalog? Flexibility, in being able to swap catalogs simply by redefining their aliases?
(Drifting somewhat:) I learned (quite recently) that one defines aliases to VSAM data sets not with the DEFINE ALIAS command, but with DEFINE PATH. (Why? Emerson?) I believe catalogs are VSAM data sets. So, then, does one use the DEFINE PATH command to define aliases of catalogs? (IANASYSPROG. Obviously.) -- gil ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
