>I would like to see FILELISTs replaced (or augmented) with a shared file
>system interface if any SP6 enhancements are made.
 
What about  the huge majority of  BITNET sites which don't  have a shared
file  system because  it performs  so poorly  on large  systems that  IBM
refused to release it?
 
>but since a hierarchical file system  is intrinsic to SP6 access I think
>the SFS is a logical replacement for FILELISTs.
 
Maybe, in 5  years or so, when and  if SFS is available for  all types of
machines and everybody has migrated to  a version of VM that supports it.
For now, I'm afraid you'll have to forget it.
 
>the  increased ease  of maintenance  would  be worth  it as  far as  I'm
>concerned.
 
Why would  it be easier  to maintain? You still  need a FILELIST  file to
define who is authorized to do what to the file.
 
>Also, you  can eliminate most  of the overhead  of trying to  figure out
>that file "A B" in FILELIST "C" is actually file "X Y" on the "W" disk.
 
The  files would  still have  to be  stored under  a different  name, for
security  reasons (or  rather, the  mechanism  for storing  them under  a
different name  would still have  to exist  for security reasons,  so the
overhead  would still  be there,  even though  the default  mapping might
become  "same  fileid").  Besides  which,  this  particular  overhead  is
negligible compared to the time it takes  to find out in what filelist "A
B" is defined  when the user doesn't  specify "C" and there are  a lot of
files available from the server.
 
  Eric