Using fork() is not a problem, John, and has long been recommended as one separation mechanism that would allow safer mixing of APF and non-APF programs.
The DDs will be the big problem, especially (as in Charles's case) where he's invoking a program he does not control. That program will expect the DDs to be allocated locally, and will expect to use typical MVS I/O macros to access them. Having the child process DYNALLOC the data sets can work, with some effort as you mentioned, but only if they can be allocated with DISP=SHR. Any requirement for DISP=MOD or OLD will require that the DDs remain solely allocated to the parent process. Of course, the parent could deallocate the DDs, but that will only work if they're not needed in a subsequent jobstep or by the parent process itself, later. -- Walt ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
