IBM Mainframe Forum

Good Afternoon,

I work for the help desk for my company. We pull data from mainframe in order to identify our users before a password reset (via TSO). Essentially we look up the user with the L function in ACF TSO. What I am looking for is a GUI to do this vs using attachmate as we are now. What I picture is a small program written in Java or C+ that you would open, input your username and password for mainframe and then simply enter the username and it would return the user's last 4 of SSN in a dialogue box. Any ideas as to how I would get started on this?

Have you talked to the vendor to determine what is already available? If not, you should start there. If what you want is not already available, you need to find out from the vendor what interface(s) are supported. You may well find out that what you want to do cannot be done the way you want to do it. If the vendor tells you what you want to do is possible, you will need to access the product documentation and read it -- THOROUGHLY -- to find out how to use the API in the way you want to use it.

This kind of question is not a good one for a forum, since the answer may well depend upon what product options are installed AT YOUR SITE, and since we do not work at your site, we cannot tell you much.

And this cannot be done using a macro in Attachmate?

it would return the user's last 4 of SSN in a dialogue box.

and where would You get the SSN from ???

asinglaterry wrote:... it would return the user's last 4 of SSN in a dialogue box ...

And why are you collecting any part of an SSN? It has absolutely nothing to do with taxation, which, I remind you, is the only legal reason to collect SSN data. Not only that, if you have non US users using the system, they most likely do not have an SSN.

In a timewarp, Steve? Although, interesting point!

steve-myers wrote:

asinglaterry wrote:... it would return the user's last 4 of SSN in a dialogue box ...

And why are you collecting any part of an SSN? It has absolutely nothing to do with taxation, which, I remind you, is the only legal reason to collect SSN data. Not only that, if you have non US users using the system, they most likely do not have an SSN.

While I absolutly agree with you Steve, I know our security team and NOC (help desk) verifies who we are with the last 4 ssn, but its not stored in RACF, its part of the companies HR database and that's the ONLY part of the SSN that they see. Interestingly, we do have remote contractors, so now you have me wondering how they validate identity.
Just as a personal note Steve, I've been back in contact with Karl from our former employeer, you remember Karl?
take care

we look up the user with the L function in ACF TSO

I am not familiar with ACF. How is the response displayed? If it is TSO line mode messages, perhaps you can use rexx with OUTTRAP to issue the command and capture the command response. Then use ISPF to display the same information.

RACF or ACF2? Back in my product support days I recall we had a customer trying to execute a RACROUTE macro in one of our exits. While RACROUTE sounds like it's RACF, in reality it's the primary entry to SAF (System Authorization Facility), supposedly independent of the security system actually installed, though this customer was a RACF user. In any event this customer did the macro hopelessly wrong; the macro got an S0C4 in the macro. After discussing this with my boss - it seemed to me rendering assistance (fixing customer code as opposed to fixing our code, with testing it looked like 5 to 8 hours) should be billable. But, no, fix the customer for free.

Back in the 1982/1983 I was tech lead for an ACF2 install. I don't recall, though, anything about an ACF2 API to look at the ACF2 data base, and I think I looked through their docs. Possibly even then an ACF2 customer had to use RACROUTE.