Re: WRKSPLF and Basic Assistance Level

Exactly.  Poor programming on IBM's part.  I hate that flimsy "WAD" 
excuse.  As far as I'm concerned, I don't care whether it's a "bug" 
according to IBM, or "Working as designed, but whoever designed it 
obviously made an error in the design, so the fact it's working to a lousy 
design shouldn't be the customers concern, IBM shoudl just fix it".

PS - for 99% of the displays, *BASIC assistance level sucks anyway.  There 
are 1 or 2 places where it is useful.

...Neil




rob@xxxxxxxxx 
Sent by: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
2005/05/16 12:23



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Subject
WRKSPLF and Basic Assistance Level






Our help desk manager had an issue.

Had a document on P01A14 on hold.
Held out queue P01A14.
With assistance level for wrksplf set to Basic, I took option "6" to 
release spool file.
Got a message saying out queue is held and to use option 10.
Took option 10 and things just hung up - for about 20 minutes and 
eventually it worked.

I reported this to IBM.  They were able to duplicate it.  Their response 
was:

The developer has taken a look into this issue and explains what is 
going on in the CPS discussion.  The core of it is that, when you are at
basic assistance level and you use the options to release a held spooled
file and then release the held output queue, the system ends up doing a 
WRKSPLF *ALL, rather than just having to look at spooled files in a 
single output queue.  If there are a lot of spooled files on the system,
this can take a long time.  After this has been done once, the pages are
in memory already so the WRKSPLF *ALL takes a much shorter period of 
time to complete.  This is working as designed.  To avoid having to wait
a long time, it is recommended to either use an assistance level of 
*INTERMED or avoid holding output queues.


To me, this sounds like some bad use of the spool files api's.  What do 
you think?


Rob Berendt
-- 
Group Dekko Services, LLC
Dept 01.073
PO Box 2000
Dock 108
6928N 400E
Kendallville, IN 46755
http://www.dekko.com