What is the purpose of the new CA Common Services for z/OS Common System Symbol Service? Which symbols are used and what do I do if my site has defined them using a different method?

Products

• COMMON SERVICES FOR Z/OS
• 90S SERVICES
• Common Services

Issue/Introduction

It is possible that one or more CA Mainframe products may use additional system symbols similar to those provided by the operating system itself.  The Common Services r14.1 CA Master Address Space provides a method for these products to create, set, and use these symbols

Common Services r14.1 introduced a new service named the Common System Symbol Service. What purpose does it serve?   

 
 

 

Environment

Common Services r14.1 operating in a z/OS environment using system symbols. 

Resolution

The CA Common System Symbols Service lets CA products create, set, and use more system symbols similar to the ones defined in the IEASYMxx member.  It acts as an extension of the existing System Symbols defined in the IEASYSMxx member of SYS1.PARMLIB. 

Some CA products may use specific system symbols that are not provided by z/OS. The Common System Symbol Service simply adds the following symbols to those that already exist:

VMUSERID - If the system is executing as a guest of a VM system, then this contains the Userid of the VM system. If not a guest, you'll see a value of ++++++.
LPARNAME - The name of the LPAR where this is executing.
HRDWNAME - The hardware name from IODF.
SMFID - SMFID as defined on the SID parameter in SRMPRMxx. This becomes available after the SMF address space successfully initializes.
OSLEVEL - A 6 character value consisting of the OS version, release, and modlevel.

The following variables are not made part of the static system symbol table but are available in the PARMLIB "IF" logic.

OSNAME - Operating System product name.
OSNMVR - A concatenation of OSNAME and OSLEVEL.

If you have a separate application to define these symbols dynamically, you can suppress their automatic definition by editing the CAIMST00 member in SYS1.PARMLIB. Simply locate the SYSSYM parm and change the default value of SYSSYM (YES) to SYSSYM (NO). Please keep in mind, however, that this change will not go into effect until after the next IPL.

 

Additional Information

For more details on the Common System Symbol Service, please refer to the Common System Symbols Service