Choosing between discrete and generic data set profiles

When you create a profile in the DATASET class, you can create either a discrete or generic profile.

Choose a generic profile for the following reasons:

If you want to protect more than one data set with the same security requirements. The data sets protected by a generic profile must have some identical characters in their names. The profile name contains one or more generic characters (*, **, or %).
If you have a single data set that might be deleted, then recreated, and you want the protection to remain the same, you can create a fully qualified generic profile. The name of a fully qualified generic profile matches the name of the data set it protects. Unlike a discrete profile, a fully qualified generic profile is not deleted when the data set itself is deleted.

Choose a discrete profile for the following reasons:

To protect one data set that has unique security requirements. The name of a discrete profile matches the name of the data set it protects.
To allow changes to a data set profile to take effect immediately, without needing to refresh in-storage copies of the profile.

Note:

All of the members of a partitioned data set are protected by one profile, the profile that protects the data set.
All of the components of a VSAM data set are protected by one profile, the profile that protects the cluster name. You do not need to create profiles that protect the index and data components of a cluster.
For a generic profile, unit and volume information is ignored because the data sets that are protected under the generic profile can reside on many different volumes.