[email protected] (R.S.) wrote:
W dniu 2015-05-05 o 15:33, John Eells pisze:
[...]
The recurring confusion about what IEFBR14 itself actually does (clear
GPR15 and return) and what people seem to think it does from the odd
post here and their (not yours) is one reason I call IEFBR14 the "most
misused program in the history of z/OS."
Well, I heard that opinion in the past. But it raises a question: what
is actual purpose of IEFBR14?
The only uses of IEFBR14 I have ever observed are:
a) "IEFBR14+DISP" combo - but this is "misues"
b) some exercices with CONDs in JCL learning process (marginal use of
course).
What did I miss?
There are elements of both joking and seriousness in my assertion that
"IEFBR14 is the most misused program of all time."
To be fair, IEFBR14 far predates IDCAMS and TSO. IDCAMS was likely
introduced with VSAM in DFEF in the 1970's, and TSO was also introduced
in the 70's. Before they were around, someone probably realized that
"something" to drive Allocation functions would be nice. IEFBR14 may
quite well have been created for exactly what people often use it for
today. But whoever wrote it is not here to tell us, and even the last
person to modify it (in 1981) has likely retired by now. And, of
course, its use in that manner is embodied in any number of samples and
documentation (ours included).
In my opinion (which I know is not universal!), there are simply better
alternatives today for *new* jobs, particularly things like production
jobs that can cause phone calls in the middle of the night when they
fail, or jobs that would require complex but avoidable rework to restart
when data set allocations fail.
--
John Eells
z/OS Technical Marketing
IBM Poughkeepsie
[email protected]
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