I felt Rob's response was way over the top and unprofessional.
However back when I wanted something to look for MSGW, I searched online to see if there was any free source available. I came across the wrkactjob print method. When was the last time I scraped off a spool file? Never. I recall considering the API route, but there was a utility at the ready right there. It's been running for a year now reliably (through both a TR update and a version update from 7.2 to 7.3).
With that said, I'm not disagreeing with concerns about the method that were brought up.
Kurt Anderson
Lead iSeries Developer - Application Development, Service Delivery Platform
-----Original Message-----
From: MIDRANGE-L [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John Yeung
Sent: Friday, September 23, 2016 3:37 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: Monitoring for MSGW
On Fri, Sep 23, 2016 at 10:51 AM, Rob Berendt <rob@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Get over this fascination with outputting to spool files and
converting the spool files to a disk file and then processing that.
While I don't recommend scraping spooled output, I can confidently say that for most folks who use it, it's not any particular fascination.
It's a way that they can easily understand and can easily implement themselves. (Easier than system APIs, if they don't already have experience or infrastructure for them.)
For many, it works well enough, especially at shops that don't stay up to date with the operating system. So it's often the case that they don't have to maintain the program for many years at a time, and even if they do update the system, IBM might not have changed the spooled output, or the program that they wrote might have enough robustness that it can handle a change in output.
All that said, in this particular case I am surprised that anyone recommended a spool-scraper because OP was already using an API-based solution before he started this thread. And you didn't even have to STFW (as Rob put it) to find one, because OP provided a link right there in his post which opened this thread. It's a cut-paste-and-compile deal too; practically no learning, thinking, or understanding required.
The whole point of this thread was to see if there were any
*improvements* on OP's existing approach. A spool-scraper is definitely not an improvement.
John Y.
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