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Status Not under consideration
Workspace z/OS
Categories z/OSMF
Created by Guest
Created on Jan 22, 2026

RELATED IDEAS

Allow multiple validation criteria for String type Variables (Type and Length at a time)

1) Problem Statement (Current Limitation)
Today, z/OSMF variable validation for String type supports either:

Type-based validation (Validators like DSNAME, DSQUAL,ALPHA etc.), or
Length-based validation (minLength, maxLength),

…but not both simultaneously for the same variable.
This leads to:

Extra manual checks in JCL/properties/scripts,
Higher error rate (invalid DSNAME length or invalid characters slip through),
More UI complexity for users who must infer constraints rather than seeing them enforced.


2) Proposed Solution: “Composable Constraints” Validation Model
Introduce a model where multiple validators can apply to the same variable, evaluated as a logical AND by default.
Key principle
A variable can declare:

Primary semantic type validator (e.g., DSNAME)
Optional additional constraints:

minLength, maxLength
Regular expression based validation

 

This is essentially:

“Validate as DSNAME and enforce max length = 44”
instead of “either DSNAME OR length”.

Idea priority High
  • Guest
    Jan 28, 2026
    .This idea asks for function that can already be accomplished using an existing feature. Additionally, changing this behavior could cause users to encounter additional issues as well as requiring many changes to existing code as well and the underlying workflow schema. Following is detailed explanation:

    The validation types mentioned, such as DSNAME, are just regular expressions that can be found in the workflow schema. For example, the regular expression used for DSNAME can be found in the workflow schema:

    <!-- DSNAME: A-Z, #, $, @, }, - or 0-9
    regexp: ^(?=.{1,44}$)[A-Z#$@][A-Z0-9\}#$@-]{0,7}([.][A-Z#$@][A-Z0-9\}#$@-]{0,7}){0,21}$
    -->

    This regular expression already includes max length of 44 built into it, and if a customer would like to modify this expression to add more rules or adjust the max length of the string, we already allow for custom regular expressions to be used as a validator.

    Additionally, changing this behavior to allow for the user to effectively set multiple regex's to be applied to the same string could result in contradictory regex statements
    For a simple example, all 3 settings could effectively set different values for the length of the string, or the regex statements could become compatible.
    Reply

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