IBM Mainframe Forum

If you have some applications on a computer at one site, and other applications on a computer at another site, and of course you are transferring data (in both directions) between the two sites, and both sites use Changeman for source management. Does anyone have any suggestions for a procedure on how to provide a notification to, and or, identification of, who uses specific copybooks on the other site?

I would transfer the copybook for each file as a separate file. Then the receiving system compares that with their copy. If the compare isn't exact, you have a problem.

It doesn't need to be done just in time. You could have a job read the copybooks from all the development levels each day and send them if they exist. That gives the receiver a chance to see it coming. How they handle the notification will be up to them.

And I KNOW it would be a pain in the butt, but there really is no way to automate the recompile, because JCL might also need to change.

Hello and welcome to the forum,

What i have seen most successful is when this activity is co-ordinated AHEAD of time - not after it is done. There should be no surprise of "here, we changed these" that happen to show up one day. . .

When common copybooks/files are used across multiple systems (or even platforms) letting this be done by the isloated groups can cause extreme problems.

A few places i've been "both" sides needed to make a change (of course to the same layouts due to the work going on at that time) and made conflicting changes - that were not detected until rather late.