On Thu, 15 Sep 2016 07:01:42 -0400, John Eells wrote:
>
>The MVS restriction stems from the need to name PDS members starting
>with an alphabetic or national character, as all users were originally
>
That "need" is largely a superstition.  Consider the following from an
ISPF member list, retouched only to obfuscate HLQ.

  DSLIST            User.TEMP.MIXED.CASE.LINKLIB          Row 0000001 of 0000013
  Command ===>                                                  Scroll ===> CSR
             Name     Prompt        Alias-of     Size      TTR     AC   AM   RM
  _________ .FooBar                            00000008   000117   00    24   24
  _________ +1                                 00000008   000127   00    24   24
  _________ $FooBar                            00000008   00010F   00    24   24
  _________ Foo.Bar                            00000008   000211   00    24   24
  _________ Foo+Bar                            00000008   000137   00    24   24
  _________ Foo$Bar                            00000008   000219   00    24   24
  _________ Foo*Bar                            00000008   000147   00    24   24
  _________ Foo-Bar                            00000008   00013F   00    24   24
  _________ Foo/Bar                            00000008   000201   00    24   24
  _________ Foo_Bar                            00000008   00012F   00    24   24
  _________ Foo=Bar                            00000008   000209   00    24   24
  _________ 0FooBar                            00000008   000107   00    24   24
  _________ 1234                               00000008   00011F   00    24   24
            **End**

All generated by a common z/OS utility with documented options.
No assembler, Rexx, or user written code; only control statements.

I'll grant that some of these member names might be problematic
when used with some facilities such as JCL or UNIX shell.

>represented by one or more members of the User Attribute Data Set
>(UADS).  User IDs  defined in RACF today can also be defined in UADS, so
>the restriction remains.
>
>The 7-character length restriction comes from the same source.  Users in
>UADS have one or more members in that data set, depending on its block
>size and the number of attributes in their user entries.  The last
>character is numeric, so someone with a lot of attributes might have
>UADS members USERID0-USERID9.  This causes the last character to be
>"reserved," and as PDS members may have 1-8 character names, TSO/E user
>IDs can be 1-7 characters in length.
> 
So why not relax the 7 character restriction for customers who are
willing to commit to relying on RACF and forgoing UADS?  ISPF
and TSO SUBMIT don't require a user ID prefix.  I rarely use that;
8 characters are too precious to squander on redundant information.
The TSO OUTPUT command?  How many still rely on that in preference
to SDSF or (E)JES.  I suppose one at each site.  Sigh.  Does the SMP/E
interactive "Command Generation" still issue "OUTPUT" after submitting
a job?  It won't find mine.

On Thu, 15 Sep 2016 12:09:12 -0500, Tom Marchant wrote:
>On Thu, 15 Sep 2016 14:41:20 +0800, Timothy Sipples wrote:
>>The O in TSO is "Option," after all.
>
>Yes, AFAIK TSO is still an acronym for Time Sharing Option. Big deal.
>TSO was an option for OS/MVT. It never was an option for MVS.
>
Right!  Imagine the reaction from significant customers if IBM were
to announce that the follow-on to z/OS 2.2 would eliminate TSO
or even make it a separately (highly) priced option.  But some
might benefit by eliminating TSO from most LPARs.

-- gil

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