Going back a looong way, I worked on VSAM Release 1 (OS/VS1 Rel 2.6-ish) in 1974. It was not the happiest of times, with a significant number of errors and problems, especially when VSAM limits were tested. Eventually peace returned, and then VSAM Release 2 was announced.(I think late 1975 or early 1976). It supported Alternate Indexes, Improved CI Processing, GET-Previous (Read Backwards) and introduced RRDS and spanned records.
Having endured a "busy" time dealing with Release 1, we were not best pleased at having to demonstrate to our masters that Release 2 would not visit yet further challenges to our production systems. The effort of proving that was almost as great as that of the original problems, which included a genuine Severity 1 (NO production at all) for a period of over 24 hours. The LISTC output indicated which release had created the file and hence the processing that was (or was not) permitted. VSAM Catalogs could describe files created by either or both versions. Of course once a REPRO/DELETE/DEFINE/REPRO or EXPORT/IMPORT was carried out on the new system, it would be a 'Version 2' file and the check on how to process the file was un-necessary. I have just realised that was 43 years ago! It must have hurt - I can still remember. The phone calls to STL - with the 8-hour time difference - and the dump 'lost' by one of the couriers necessitating an IBM SE personally transporting its replacement to California in his carry on bag! MKB ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
