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Mainframe Administration : LinkList and LLA


During my interactions with many experienced mainframe admin professionals, I felt that some where with the given time lines with delivery of work loads there is a lack of basic understanding of how Mainframe components work.

Today I'm trying to write some understanding that I have around LinkList and LLA and would like to get updated.

  1. Can we run a system with no LinkList and LLA?
  2. Can we run a system with just LinkList and no LLA?
  3. Is it compulsion to have LLA refreshed everytime we update LinkList?

Below is what I think.

Can we run a system with no LinkList and LLA? or with LinkList alonne and no LLA

Yes we can.

LLA can be avoided if we are ready to have enough processing capacity to do all the required I/O to fetch the modules.

LinkList can be avoided if we can hardcode steplibs in all our Jcl's and the same goes for system module too, may be we need to do it at the development stage. Though it be a hypothetical situation and a bad practice. The understand that we need to have is that LinkList only works a referral place for any module being called. So, if we can tell all the calling module where to look for it LinkList can be avoided.

Is it compulsion to have LLA refreshed everytime we update LinkList?

No, it is not a compulsion to have LLA refreshed. We can have NoFreeze option enabled in CSVLLAxx and you dont have to refresh LLA for the changes to get into effect.


Published on May 4, 2018 by - Yugesh Pothuru


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