Administering the RACFVARS member list

Create the member list of a RACFVARS profile by issuing the ADDMEM operand of the RDEFINE command. When you specify multiple members, they are added to the RACFVARS profile in the same order that you specify them with the ADDMEM operand of the RDEFINE command. For example, if you specify ADDMEM(A B) with the RDEFINE command, the members are stored in the RACFVARS profile as A B.

If you issue the RALTER command to add one or more members to an existing RACFVARS profile, the new members are stored in the profile in the reverse of the order in which you specified them with the ADDMEM operand of the RALTER command. Additionally, if the existing profile already contains members, the new members are stored ahead of the existing members. For example, if you specify ADDMEM(C D) with the RALTER command to add members to an existing profile that already contains the members A B, the resulting member list stored in the profile is D C A B.

To view the members in a RACFVARS profile, issue the RLIST RACFVARS variable-name command. Note that the RLIST command lists the members in alphabetical order, not in the order in which they occur in the RACFVARS profile.

To view the members in the order in which they occur in a RACFVARS profile, use the output of the database unload (IRRDBU00) utility. For an example of using the DFSORT ICETOOL reporting tool to format a RACFVARS member report, see Creating a RACFVARS member report.

Tip: To reorder a RACFVARS member list, first use the RLIST command to list and make note of the members of the RACFVARS profile. Then delete the profile using the RDELETE command, and reissue the RDEFINE command with the ADDMEM operand to specify the members in the new order.

Guidelines: Because the order of the member names in the RACFVARS profile can be a critical factor in the successful matching of a resource name with the expected general resource profile, the following guidelines apply:

When possible, avoid specifying a member name that is a subset of another member name in the same list. When impossible to avoid, the member name that is a subset of another name should follow the name of which it is a subset.
Minimize the number of members in a single member list.
Simplify the name of a general resource profile that contains a RACF® variable by minimizing the use of generic characters after the initial ampersand (&) of the variable name.