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Status Not under consideration
Categories General DB
Created by Guest
Created on Oct 7, 2020

OSAM Encryption for 4K or smaller blocksizes

OSAM Encryption (VSAM linear data set) currently has a minimum blocksize of 4K which would inhibit our ability to implement pervasive encryption. A large proportion of our databases have blocksizes smaller than 4K and more are moving in that direction.

One of the problems we have encountered since moving to n-way datasharing in our IMSPlex, has been the historical tendency towards larger blocksizes. With block-level data sharing, this causes us locking issues which we have sometimes remediated by reducing the database blocksize below 4K. Approximately 30% of buffer usage is for databases with blocksizes smaller than 4K.

Idea priority High
  • Guest
    Reply
    |
    Nov 19, 2020

    Hi,

    Thank you for your interest in keeping IMS a vital and successful product. Software development has continuously evolved during IMS's lifetime, and so has IMS itself. We have kept pace with, adopted, and implemented many industry standard best practices within our organization, including Continuous Delivery, Design Thinking, and Agile.

    When choosing new features to add from the list of requirements in our backlog, we assess which will bring the most value to as many clients as possible and prioritize those.

    At this time, after reviewing this request for enhancement and assessing its potential value, we have decided to reject it. The reason we are rejecting this item is we have not had many clients ask for this enhancement. There doesn’t seem to be much interest from other clients. We would rather invest in high priority items that bring the most value to many clients.

    We appreciate your input to IMS, and we hope that you will continue to submit ideas for improvements as customer feedback is a key component to shaping the future direction of IMS.

    Thank you.