This is the semi-annual ballroom session near the end of the week hosted by Bob Shannon, where anything goes. Step up to the mike, and ask away. Someone might answer your question, or make a rude remark. Try your luck.

Someone gamely steps up to the microphone and asked: "Are PDSE's safe for load modules yet? Has anyone actually started using them? A show of hands in a ballroom of 300 people yields four people who are using program objects. Skip Robinson is one of those four, and he likes 'em a lot.

Another person asks if it is possible to share an HFS between systems? The answer seems to be... well, kinda. If you mark your HFS as being read-only, you can share them, but the HFS is pretty useless that way. IBM said they were doing a performance rewrite of HFS. After that comes out, then they plan to tackle data sharing between systems. "Don't hold your breath", they said, "but it will happen in your lifetime."

Is anybody using swap datasets? Why? Few people in the audience were using swap datasets anymore, and nobody could think of a good reason to be doing so. Bob Rogers said in the absence of any good reason he was going to "simplify" it out of MVS.

Skip Robinson expressed some concern about coupling facility outages, and said he has a hard time moving a CF "hole" from one system to another. Nobody offered any help.

Many people - 50 or so - raised their hands, answering the question "Who monitors ibm-main?" (This is a mailing list maintained at the University of Alabama. To subscribe, send a mail message to listserv@ua1vm.ua.edu, and in the body of your message, put "subscribe ibm-main My Name".)

Watch for APAR OW29471! It is reputed to cut GQSCAN over by 50%!