Altering Link Items

Allowed Changes to Data Set Link Items details the changes that can be made to data set link items. An asterisk (*) refers to the explanatory note following the table.

Table 32. Allowed Changes to Data Set Link Items

Option

Model

Update

File Format Conversion (No Item Changes)

Record Format Conversion (Item Changes)

Add new link item.

No

No

No

Yes*

Delete existing link item.

No

No

No

Yes*

Change structure referenced by link item.

No

No

No

No

Change link item type.

No

No

No

No

Change OCCURS option.

No

No

No

No

Change number of occurrences.

No

No

No

No

Change data item referenced by verified link.

No

No

No

No

Explanatory Note

Adding or deleting link items can affect not only the data set containing the link item, but also the data set referenced by the link. A data set that is not referenced by links can be changed to a data set that is referenced by links. However, the link items do have null values after the reorganization process.

Link items cannot point to sectioned data sets. However, link data items that point to nonsectioned data sets can be included in sectioned data sets.

When a link item is used in a data set, both the data set containing the link item and the data set being pointed to by the link must be declared using the EXTENDED keyword or must omit the EXTENDED declaration. That is, the use of the EXTENDED attribute for both data sets must be identical.

Counted link items can be deleted. However, since there can be multiple counted link items in different data sets referring to the counted link item to be deleted, the count item in the referenced data set also should be deleted. Otherwise, the value of the count item might not be accurate.

When a link item is deleted, it must also be eliminated from all remaps which include it.

Any program which attempts to use a deleted link item terminates with the error VERSIONERROR #1.

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