Re: AW: Disk balancing - when

["Al Barsa, Jr." <barsa2@xxxxxxx>]

>I take it, STRDSKRGZ is something like defrag under DOS..


The nice thing about this list is that I learn something new every day.

I had never heard of the STRDSKRGZ command, so when I went to prompt it, 
shizam (holy Gomer Pyle) it was there.  Although I needed specific 
authority to it.

So I called my good folks in zip code 55901, and asked them what it does.

The short answer is that it's a disk defragger.

Armed with my knowledge that in 99.9999999999% of all cases, OS/400 does an 
outstanding job handling free space, I asked why do you need it.  What 
followed was a long answer, which nets out that it's a placebo!  You 
virtually never need it (although there were some bugs in V3R1 - remember 
that release, the one that absorbed - where it helped), but it stands there 
as a placebo to make people think that the system has done something.  It 
was pointed out to me that Level 2 likes to recommend it to customers, as 
it gives them a warm fuzzy.

There were some plans not to bring this command across from CISC to RISC, 
but there were some large customers that demanded that it be kept.

One might think that If Rochester has the budget to maintain placebo 
commands, then they could find the trivial budget to keep DDS competitive 
with SQL, so that programmers that create databases would have the power of 
DDS to cost effectively maintain databases.

Ah, DDS is not an industry standard so we cannot afford to maintain it, but 
placebo commands are!!!

Enclosed find one gift certificate, redeemable at the Mayo Clinic for a 
lobotomy.

Al






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Al Barsa, Jr. - Account for Midrange-L
Barsa Consulting, LLC.  
400 > 390

Phone:          914-251-1234
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