I think the op might really be trying to decide if it's "better" to have a single MCAT for the site and thus have the same view of "everything" or if having individual MCATs for each LPAR and then sharing them as UCATs with the "other" LPARs is better.
I have operated both ways and I really don't see a "super" benefit in one method over the other that gives it something "more" than the other way, I think that there are sites that have a philosophy of one MCAT for the site and some that feel that each LPAR "needs" it's own MCAT. As for why they are shared, if you have multiple MCATs (one per LPAR) and you want to be able to access data that is in MCAT-1 (on LPAR-1) from a system that is using MCAT-2 (on LPAR-2) as it's MCAT, then you need to make sure that MCAT-1 is available to LPAR-2 and since you can't use STEPCAT and/or JOBCAT (any more) it's much simpler to define MCAT-1 as a usercatalog of MCAT-2 (and MCAT-2 as a usercatalog of MCAT-1). I find that it's easy to get confused if you aren't careful in a multiple MCAT system, and it's simple to overdo it with symbolics whether you have a single MCAT or multiple MCATs, but that doesn't make multiple MCAT's any less useful than a single MCAT, just different. With all of the things that IBM forces on us with z/OS, allowing you to have a "choice" once it a while is (to me) a good thing. Brian ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
