Gen r8 and z/OS

The beta test for Gen r8 has now ended and we are finishing off the changes made to our products to support r8. We will be launching this release 8.0 in early May to coincide with the general availability of Gen 8.0.

The most significant changes that affected us were on the z/OS platform. The introduction of z/OS Libraries (OPSLIBs for z/OS), dynamic RI triggers and changes to the way that applications are linked affected many aspects of GuardIEn, especially in the areas of impact analysis and code construction.

In previous releases of Gen, the link-edit control cards were created from the Gen skeletons using file tailoring and then a single INCLUDE was added for the dialog manager, with the remaining modules included using autocall.

With Gen r8, the format of the link-edit control cards has changed. Instead of using autocall to resolve called action blocks, each non-compatibility Gen module referenced in the load module has a specific INCLUDE APPLOAD or IMPORT statement.

This means that if you create the link-edit control cards outside of Gen, you will have to replicate this approach. A new business system library is available which Gen populates with the link-edit control cards (called binder control cards using the new IBM terminology), so these are available if required.

Another change is that dynamic action blocks that are packaged into a z/OS Lib are now called using a literal instead of a variable, for example, in Gen r7 and previously, a call to action block AAAA would be implemented as:

09 AAAA-ID PIC X(8) VALUE 'AAAA'.
...

CALL AAAA-ID

In Gen r8, if AAAA is included in a z/LIB, this is now

CALL 'AAAA'

If you installing code using multiple models, then the use of external action block and external system load libraries must be carefully considered to ensure that dynamic action blocks packaged into a z/LIB are not found via autocall since the binder will then statically link the object modules instead of resolving them using the IMPORT statement.