Re: Product ID for PTFs

[Jim Oberholtzer <midrangel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm not suggesting that the commentary regarding PTFs is out of reason at
all, but before we go too far with it some historical perspective might be
in order.

The PTF system was developed by IBM long before the internet, and is so
deeply embedded in the development systems that to change it much would be
a massive undertaking.  Therefore the PTF numbers will almost never be
linked to an LPP by the PTF number.  Remember this applies to all products
IBM uses PTFs for not just IBM i and it's LPPs.  Also, many PTFs apply to
multiple VRM combinations of the software they patch, so encoding that in
the number would not work.

Could IBM do a better job of building a searchable cross reference, maybe
so, but I'll follow that up with a question; Do you want IBM spending its
limited resources building cross reference software for PTFs or rather
spending that money on software enhancements, support, and quality control?

I vote for the latter.   We've learned how to use the existing
lookup methods to our advantage so while a more robust query for PTFS might
be nice, it does not enhance my use of IBM i.

--
Jim Oberholtzer
Chief Technical Architect
Agile Technology Architects


On Wed, Mar 9, 2022 at 10:11 AM Andrew Lopez (SXS US) <
Andrew.Lopez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Amen, a thousand times over.
>
> If they can't give us that in every description/reference to the PTF, they
> should make DSPPTF capable of displaying a single PTF number with
> LICPGM(*ALL).  Goodness knows, I can display *ALL PTFs in *ALL LICPGM, but
> I can't display one.  Ridiculous and should have been addressed decades
> ago.
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