> On Apr 22, 2014, at 12:00 AM, "IBM-MAIN automatic digest system"
> <lists...@listserv.ua.edu> wrote:
>
> IBM first introduced VSAM (in a more basic form of course) back in the
> 1970s for DOS/VS, OS/VS1, and OS/VS2 ("Access Method Services"). I don't
> think VSAM was ever separately licensed, but someone can correct me if I'm
> mistaken on that point.
VSAM for VSE and VM pre-zVSE was a separate order able product for quite a
while (for VM you always had to buy it). Generating the CMSDOS and CMSBAM
segments to allow VSAM to work was always a PITA Frankenstein bolts-on-the-neck
thing. IBM refused to do CMS-native language compilers for anything but
Fortran, so you needed VSAM to do any kind of random-access record processing
without dropping into assembler to call the native CMS file manipulation
macros. You also had to use VSE-formatted minidisks for it to work. Major PITA.
> z/VM's CMS and MUSIC/SP also support VSAM, also in base.
Nope. CMS VSAM support always required a separate purchase of essentially a
copy of the VSE VSAM code for VSAM to work for CMS apps or to access VSAM data
on OS or VSE disks. Which BTW is no longer available for ordering, and it was
ancient when IBM killed it. It still works if you have it, but you can't order
it any longer. Ditto MUSIC, IIRC. So no VSAM support any longer for CMS,
really. Someone might write new CMS apps, and we wouldn't want that, now would
we? :(
The only VSAM support left in the VM base are some ancient versions of the VSAM
utilities like AMSERV, etc, which don't work without the VM/VSAM product code.
CMS lost the ability to do VSAM more than half a decade ago when IBM pulled the
VM/VSAM product (same time we lost a lot of the ported apps from zOS and VSE
that used it). It was also never kept up to date for modern zOS VSAM files and
catalogs, so at the end it only worked with VSE or native CMS apps.
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