Re: Vendor wants an SST profile

I'll add that some of the traditional SST/DST functions have, over time,
also had commands and/or APIs externalized to provide specific functions
(providing an alternative to SST/DST). The APIs might be generally
documented or only available in a more limited fashion. Several people
involved in system-level application development on this list might
remember me reaching out prior to V6R1 to find out what all "special needs"
they might have in order to maintain their applications on the i in light
of tightened system integrity. The Alter capability for a given virtual
address was not provided, though some rather strange APIs were :)

On Fri, Nov 22, 2019 at 9:15 PM Bruce Vining <bruce.vining@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

(Assuming "Bruce" is me) Companies other than IBM can provide service to
the i. This means education/assistance is made available to them (why I
asked earlier about formal IBM education). The IBM i service functions
manual found at
https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/POWER6/areaj/areaj.pdf,
though not necessarily the latest, might give you some ideas about what a
company (especially HA) might be (legitimately) interested in.

From that manual:

"The Display/Alter/Dump function is controlled by selecting display
options and by responding to
prompts. Each Display/Alter/Dump function option allows you to request
specific data. The following
are examples of data types:
v Machine Interface (MI) object
v Licensed Internal Code data
v Licensed Internal Code module
v Tasks and processes
v Starting address"

Back in the 80s (think S/38) users could somewhat do this with no formal
education as IBM provided microfiche, VMC manuals, etc. In the 21st
century (think i) this level of information is not generally available.
"Somebody" outside of IBM PSRs (if that title even exists these days in the
field -- it's been a long time for me) or Rochester support, using the
Alter capability of D/A/D would scare me on anything less than a play
machine -- UNLESS they have assistance by way of formal education and/or
(again to quote from the service manual) working "while under the direction
of the next level of support".

Hope this helps,
Bruce

On Fri, Nov 22, 2019 at 8:26 PM Joe Pluta <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

On 11/22/2019 5:53 PM, James H. H. Lampert wrote:

If I did not consider the vendor trustworthy, the mere act of
requesting SST access would be considered grounds to permanently
blacklist the vendor.

Thanks, everyone. The overwhelmingly negative response to this really
just reinforces my original impression. When they asked for God
authority (ALLOBJ, SECADM, SERVICE, IOSYSCFG) on their regular profiles
it was bad enough, but I have never heard of requiring SST access.
Bruce, if you see this response and can enlighten me as to why someone
MIGHT need some form of SST access, that would be interesting. But the
vendor pretty specifically requested D/A/D.

I'm going to go back to them and be a little more specific in my
questioning. And at this point, I'll be very interested to see if it's
really the vendor or the business partner.

Thanks again, everyone!

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Thanks and Regards,
Bruce
931-505-1915