Re: Doubt about Server Pac and Catalogs


Víctor de la Fuente wrote:
I am a newbie on Server Pac, and I read a lot of documentation related to
Server Pac;
<snip>

I can understand his pain. I have done many over the years but I am
in the process of doing my first one since OS/390 2.10 (although I've
helped others during z/OS 1.4 and z/OS 1.6). The amount of documentation
can be overwhelming - even to a seasoned sysprog.


Well, not really. The book recommends using a user catalog to
own the SMP/E CSI data sets that are on one of the target library
volumes, and one on the HFS volume if that volume is SMS-managed,
and then one on each additional product set target volume.


I have use one "CPAC" master catalog and one SSA for everything for
all the ones I have done (many in the past while consulting). This
time... 2 HLQs - one for SYS1 and one for our systems HLQ that gets
used for SMP/E and CPAC datasets like CMDPROC, DOCLIB, etc. I then
MERGECAT the that HLQ back into the proper catalog sometime after
the SSA is removed from the physical data sets.

At other shops I still used one SSA / catalog but there might be
many other SSA relationships (SYS1,ISP,ISF,GIM, etc.). However,
I like the SYS1.* approach for everything including HFS files
(SYS1.OMVS.resvol.ROOT, SYS1.OMVS.resvol.TIVOLI, etc.).

John,

One thing I still don't like is that the system upgrade option doesn't
let you define a catalog. I still want to create one as a "work
catalog". I have to do this on my own. Do you know why that isn't
an option?


But I cannot imagine how can I catalog target data sets for, say, AOP, in
one catalog and distribution data sets for AOP in other catalog. OK, I can
create an alias for DLIBS, but I'm not sure this is a good option.

Well, you probably do not want the DLIBs to be cataloged in the
master catalog, but you can either leave them uncataloged (they
will be located using SMP/E DDDEFs) or catalog them in the user
catalog used for the DLIB CSI data set.

<snip>

I have a mixture here. Some systems have some DLIBs cataloged (blast
from the past?) and some only have a few dlibs cataloged. I still find
lots of JCL with SYS1.AMODGEN and SYS1.AMACLIB. (just last week a CICS
guy called me and asked me where SYS1.AMODGEN was on one system where
it wasn't cataloged... I told him to use SYS1.MODGEN instead). The ones
that are cataloged are cataloged in the master catalog using a system
symbolic for the volser. When I upgrade, I change IEASYMxx.

BTW... kudos to IBM for electronic Serverpac delivery! This was my
first one doing 100% electronic (it wasn't available when we did
our 1.6 ESP and we skipped 1.7). It sure beats mounting tapes!

The only thing I didn't like was downloading 16GB of CD images
"additional material"). There was no "download all" option so
I had to select each one individually. I also ran into a few
file problems (according to download director). The download director
won't let you skip one file so you have to cancel the whole thing
and start over (and not re-select the files you already downloaded).
A lot of data compared to the measly 5.6G for the z/OS portion of
the order. :-)

Regards,

Mark
--
Mark Zelden
Sr. Software and Systems Architect - z/OS Team Lead
Zurich North America / Farmers Insurance Group: G-ITO
mailto:mark.zelden@xxxxxxxxxxxx
z/OS and OS390 expert at http://searchDataCenter.com/ateExperts/
Systems Programming expert at http://expertanswercenter.techtarget.com/
Mark's MVS Utilities: http://home.flash.net/~mzelden/mvsutil.html

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