RE: Environment variables and IASP's on the I-Series -- MIDRANGE-L

Hi again Jim

seems to me a user space is better if the values are required to bepersistent; I would expect that the environment variables would needto be set somewhere, maybe at best at IPL - which means you needsomewhere to retrieve them from...

I like the indirection factor as well, but a user space works goodfor this stuff. You can easily knock up a command to mimic thebehaviour of the WRKENVVAR command. Using a combination of aWRK<something> command and a RTV<something> command will achieve whatyou want. For the WRK command you need to investigate a Promptoverride program. You guys already do this for the RTVIASPA command -why do it another different way ?

I generally use an External data structure to document the layout andimpose structure but it is hardly a requirement - just a preference.

Re the beer: I'm up for a beer tomorrow night if you're interested,otherwise Sunday may be a chance.


Regards
Evan Harris

At 12:52 p.m. 22/09/2005, you wrote:

My intention is to hold certain variables that will be global for all of
our boxes.
These variable will hold the (mostly) permanent locations for certain
message files, message queues, etc.

I'm already using a module to retrieve the values - so that will be
application independent.

Simple example:
I often need to parse out the full message text of a message with
parameters. This requires knowing the location of the message file where
the message is (CPF's are in QCPFMSG, RNQ's are in QRNXMSG, etc.) I
don't want to hard code these locations. Another need is the name of
certain message queues that will hold debug information. I don't want to
hard code those either. So I have the following environment variables:

CPF_MSG_LOC = QSYS/QCPFMSG
RNQ_MSG_LOC = QSYS/QRNXMSG
ERR_MSGQ = *LIBL/FDM_ERRMSG

And I have a module to retrieve the location based on the variable. I
like this kind of indirection.

Why not user spaces or data areas?

An extra object to move around.
An extra object to get trashed.
Data areas often get corrupted (as in un-structured. Messy. Etc)
Commands already built in for WRKENVVAR and such.
The data will not change very often - so it just feels better with
environment variables to me.

The variables will (should) always be the same on all machines.

Specifically about the IASP's - I need an understanding considering our
failover capacities. You know those details of course.

Thanks for the input.

Let me know when you're up for a beer ;-)

Jim