On Wed, 14 Sep 2016 14:05:44 +0800, Timothy Sipples wrote: >zMan wrote: >>If my name were "*�tienne*", would I be able to have that as a TSO userid? >>Or would I have to suffer through just "*Etienne*", sans accent aigu? > >a RACF user ID is 1 to 8 characters in length ... > Usage has evolved. Perhaps "bytes" rather than "characters" may be more suitable here nowadays. "Étienne" is seven characters but perhaps 8 or 14 bytes.
The restriction of the character vocabulary is a concession to the EBCDIC code page babel. Poor Étienne might be unable to log on with a CP500 terminal. Passwords are worse. >Here are two more caveats: > >(a) If you want your RACF ID to be usable within MVS subsystems, the first >character cannot be a numeric digit (0 through 9). > Is there any good reason for this? Any circumstance in which a syntax allows either a number or a user ID and must be able to distinguish by examining the first character? "Company Policy"? >(b) In addition to the MVS restriction, if you want your RACF ID to be >usable within TSO, the user ID cannot be longer than 7 characters. > And here TSO fails the "plays well with others" test. Many enterprises require for administrative convenience that each user have identical IDs on all systems, and (for no good reason -- "Company Policy" again) that 8 characters be supported or required. The antiquated TSO restriction is armament for managers who oppose moving applications to z/OS. -- gil ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
