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Clone components via stage from development (S1)

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Nobody ever starts developing a new program (component) from scratch, typically everybody always starts from a copy of an existing component. Just performing a checkout from baseline is not a solution, because you cannot change the member name, the library type or the application you are checking out from).

To take this even a step further: the (existing) component to be cloned may or may not have the same library type, and typically resides in either of these libraries: 

  • In a staging library of the same package or another package.
  • In a baseline library of the same application or another application.

So how can you do this cloning in ChangeMan ZMF?

Some (many?) ChangeMan ZMF users have learned the trick to use a staging DSN or a baseline DSN as the personal library to stage from. This works fine, except that you must know the DSN to be used as the personal DSN.

It's hard to remember all these different flavors of ChangeMan ZMF managed DSNs. Experienced ChangeMan ZMF users will typically lookup the staging or baseline DSN using ChangeMan ZMF's query package function, and then via cut-and-paste capture the DSN they want to stage from (a time consuming process). Less experienced ChangeMan ZMF users typically are even not aware of these query features and often contact the ChangeMan ZMF Helpdesk operators to ask for help on this topic.

What is really needed is an easy way of cloning components from such libraries, but without having to lookup the DSN of these libraries first. Consider the approach to address this issue as documented in the Z-Clues (login required).