This is why I strongly recommend that installation-defined symbols be prefixed 
with a unique string, which I also recommend be the SHARE installation code. It 
reduces the number of meaningful character to 5 or 6 but pretty much rules out 
stepping on toes. Debugging problems caused by symbol 'overlays' could be 
excruciating. 

.
.
.
J.O.Skip Robinson
Southern California Edison Company
Electric Dragon Team Paddler 
SHARE MVS Program Co-Manager
323-715-0595 Mobile
[email protected]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]]
> On Behalf Of Art Gutowski
> Sent: Wednesday, February 3, 2016 01:08 PM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: [Bulk] Re: Manipulating system symbols
> 
> On Sun, 31 Jan 2016 08:50:43 -0800, Skip Robinson
> <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> >We run several CA products, which means CA90S (name?) early in IPL. I don't
> know CAMASTER, but on a running system I can find no evidence of the
> symbols you name. I'm not sure that the point of CA initialization would be
> early enough for our needs.
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-
> [email protected]]
> >> On Behalf Of Bruce Hewson
> >> Sent: Saturday, January 30, 2016 09:43 PM
> >> To: [email protected]
> >> Subject: [Bulk] Re: Manipulating system symbols
> >>
> >> one point, if you are running CA products, these days some extra
> >> symbols get populated by CA code - one of which is LPARNAME.
> >>
> >> at CAMASTER initialization these symbols get added.
> >>
> >> VMUSER
> >> LPARNAME
> >> HRDWNAME
> >> SMFID
> >> OSLEVEL
> >>
> >> been this way at least since 2013
> 
> Probably not, Skip.  It sounds like you need these symbols to determine other
> PARMLIB members and parameter values. CAMaster comes up during
> subsystem initialization...much too late.
> 
> We noticed CAMaster with our latest Common Services upgrades...either 14.0
> or 14.1...and the symbols Bruce describes do exist.  We came from 12.0, but
> now we see CAMaster is active on our sole 12.0 instance, but the symbols in
> question do not exist.  Looks like this started with 14.0?
> 
> I'm glad to see that this is conspicously documented...<emphasis>once we
> knew what to look for</emphasis>.
> 
> It vexes me that the default is SYSSYM(YES).  I was at a shop that used
> &OSLEVEL. for its own purposes, and I can imagine the level of havoc wrought
> if CAMASTER changed the value of this symbol (the way the documentation is
> worded, I gather if left to default, this is the result).  Compound that with 
> the
> complications of propagating symbol table updates in a JES3 MAS, and you've
> got a migraine brewing.  Thankfully, we don't have any of these symbols in use
> here (yet).
> 
> Bottom line:  not a big fan, and we will probably set up CAIMST00 with
> SYSSYM(NO) asap.  Who knows what new symbols will be added in 14.next.  I
> would rather see the symbols required (tho this seems a strong word in this
> case) by the product and let systems programmers define and document them
> to our standards in the symbol table.  We can then identify and resolve
> potential conflicts.  I don't like surprises, and this was a surprise to a 
> couple of
> us here.
> 
> Art Gutowski
> General Motors, LLC

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