QSCMATPG and QSCCRTPG

[bvining@xxxxxxxxxxxx]

These programs (QSCMATPG and QSCCRTPG) are useful in the OPM
environment (MI or otherwise), but are not considered to be formal
system APIs or to be overly strategic in terms of future enhancements.
As such, I doubt that they will be formally documented in some
future release.  Having said that, I also doubt though that these
programs will disappear from QSYS any time soon either.

These programs were first introduced back in R5 of S/38 CPF in order
to allow someone, in effect, to send over a communications connection
program updates.  The user could use QSCMATPG to get a *pgm into a
physical file, send the file, and then use QSCCRTPG to recreate the *pgm
on the remote S/38.  I know I first became aware of them at a S/38
Technical Vitality session having to do with support for a network of
S/38s, with the documentation simply being in the form of a handout.

This intended use (program distribution) was never meant to be long
term, and in fact S/38 introduced the concept of save files in R7
which logically takes care of the original intent of these programs.

As these programs do have limitations (no ILE *pgm support for instance)
and their intended use has been met with other system support I would
not expect to see them documented as being an interface to use in
future development.

I am aware that some used the programs in order to patch the materialized
data and then recreate the program.  But this was using knowledge of the
materialized data that was, I believe, never documented as part of the
program output.  That is someone familiar with CPF MI might recognize
what was going on in the program(s), but the behavior was not documented
as such.

Bruce (speaking for myself and using some very old memories)

>
>All I was trying to say is, if you use OPM MI, then these are two rather
>useful APIs, and they should be documented somewhere.
>


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