Greg Stigers wrote:
<snip> you do raise the questions, and provide your answers to them; is it
necessary to
do so, and what do you do if someone tells you to make it so? We MPEers have
seen this
more than once, and just had a discussion about modifying the contents of a
program in
memory, and how well that works on a Sun system. <end snip>

I agree it is always about who defines the argument. I have had this out
with
private, accreditor's and governmental auditors. Being auditors they must
find something wrong
(I think they lose there status in the guild if they don't.) I many cases I
have had them come
back with suggestions that the 3000 should look and act like an IBM 370 or
at least an AS/400.
When I explain why that is neither possible or necessary they are flustered.

Their problem isn't that they can't understand my answers, we all know that
answers on the 3000
are straight forward. The problem lies in the fact that the 3000 does not
fit the IBM model. The
debate and rules have been defined by people and companies with the best
marketing. Examples of
this is IBM defining "on line systems" as using CICS, or its 3rd party
equivalents, all because
their O/S couldn't talk to terminals. This is just one example of others
defining the terms,
another that comes to mind is "open systems."

This happens in large extent because HP treats the 3000 like a step child of
HP. Like that
famous step child, Cinderella, receives no promotion from its parent. The
fact that the 3000,
like Cinderella, can dance better than everyone at the ball is apparently
not significant.
The world is looking to someone else to define the latest dance craze and
its steps.

Should MPE throw on another layer of software just to look like IBM? RACF is
an add-on not part of the MVS O/S. I do use a 3rd party security package (In
deference to its competitors I won't say which one but its inventor is now a
law professor.) I have found that it is necessary to have this level of
security, others may not. Whatever we have it is security that works with
and for the MPE O/S. That is how we should define ourselves to auditors and
others with IBM based models.

Define your needs to yourself and others. Don't let others define them for
you. Take back the initiative.