Location of ISPF/PDF Libraries

Each ISPF library must be completely contained on one minidisk. You specify this with the user ID of the owner, and the virtual address of the device on which the library resides.

You can have more than one ISPF/PDF library on the same minidisk. ISPF/PDF libraries can also exist on the same minidisk with other CMS files that are not ISPF/PDF libraries. Usually, the lowest level libraries in a project (the DEVLIBs in our example) are private libraries, owned by the principal or only user. These should have an organization of S to eliminate the need for compressions. Higher level libraries are usually common libraries accessed for reading by anyone on the project, but maintained by one designated individual.

For example, if your responsibility is to maintain test data for a given project, you would have write access to the PERSONNEL.TESTLIB.DATA library. Everyone else on the project would only have read access. This kind of restriction helps protect the integrity of the data. It helps ensure that everyone is using the same files.

If you want to protect higher level libraries against unauthorized access by those outside the project, minidisks on which they reside can be protected with read passwords. You can, for example, assign the same read password to all minidisks containing libraries for the PERSONNEL project. This lets people working on the project access any library, but prevents those outside the project from gaining access.