Re: Technical and Philosophy

> I need to keep users out of my files after 7:00 PM.  Someone has
> suggested that we allocate the files and that would keep the users out.
> Another suggestion was that we secure the users out by disabling the
> user profiles.
> 
> Which approach would be best/easiest?

As you may have gathered from the other replies, opinions will vary as we
try to imagine your exact circumstances.  In the case where the users need
to be out of a large application I find it much easier to bring down the
subsystem.  You should be able to WRKACTJOB and get an idea of where users
are grouped as far as subsystems go.  QINTER is the standard, but most shops
will have one or more copies of QINTER to group like users together (in my
case, one for remote users, one for order entry users, one for
manufacturing/shipping, one for occasional users and a couple for
programmers).  If you have a similar setup, you will probably want to bring
down the end user's subsystem(s) and leave up one that will allow your
programmers to continue working.  

I hate the idea of enabling/disabling user profiles.  If you do it
programmatically, you will need a program with at least security admin
rights.  You can use CHGACTSCDE entry to schedule when a profile will be
enabled/disabled, but I hate having a program dependant on this when there
is always a chance that your programs may be kicked off at an unexpected
time and the activation times aren't changed.

The suggestion that you allocate the files isn't bad, but doesn't address
the issue of what happens when a user already has the file allocated and
your allocation request is left pending. You will need to plan some method
of getting that user out of the file, whether you attempt to allocate it or
not. 

FWIW, we bring down each interactive subsystem in turn, and immediately
restart the programmer subsystems.  This ensures that no programmer has left
something hanging that has files allocated, but still lets them monitor
what's happening during day-end processing.  This does require that you
assign each workstation to a subsystem (ADDWSE).