z/OS Operations Libraries and Dynamic Linking

Gen r8 introduced a new feature to package action blocks into z/OS Operations Libraries (z/LIB). These are DLLs that contain one or more action blocks and are similar in concept to the operations libraries that have been available in Gen for the Windows and UNIX environments for some time.

One difference between Windows/UNIX and z/OS relates to the use of the MVS Dynamic Linking property of an action block (or business system default). To be eligible for packaging into a z/LIB, the action block must be marked as dynamic (not static or compatibility).

You should be careful when converting from purely dynamic action blocks to z/LIBs. If you only package the top level action blocks into the z/LIB, the lower level action blocks will be called dynamically from a separate load module if they remain dynamic and are not packaged into the z/LIB.

Consider the following example: AB1 calls AB2 and both are marked as dynamic, either as a business system default or explicitly.

If you create a z/LIB and only add AB1 into the z/LIB, since AB2 is private to AB1, then the z/LIB will only contain AB1 and AB2 remains an 'old style' dynamic action block with its own load module and the call from AB1 to AB2 is dynamic.

If AB2 is private, it should either be changed to static so that it is only statically linked into the z/LIB, or added to the scope of z/LIB so that it is also linked into the z/LIB.