Every note pad has a unique 32 byte name determined by its creator. The note pad name is divided into four 8 byte sections. Each 8 byte section must be left justified, padded on the right with EBCDIC blanks as needed. Each section can contain any upper case alphabetic (A-Z), numeric (0-9), national (@, #, $), or underscore (_) character. The first two sections (owner and application) must not be all blanks. The remaining sections can be all blank. The IXCYNOTE macro defines a mapping for the note pad name (ixcynote_tNotePadName).

Owner, application, function, and qualifier each represent one 8 byte section of the note pad name. In this notation, the sections within the note pad name are demarcated by a period. XCF also uses this dot qualified format when the note pad name is used in operator commands and messages (blanks are also suppressed). However, when your program composes a note pad name, there is no separator for the sections.

To avoid names used by IBM®, do not begin note pad names (owner) with the letters A through I or the character string SYS. Names beginning with the string SYSXCF are reserved for use by XCF.

The note pad name must be carefully chosen. To avoid conflicting usage, the note pad name must be unique across all applications that make use of note pads. You might need to account for the possibility that some installations might be running multiple copies of your application within the same sysplex. Since the note pad name is an input to the XCF algorithm that determines which coupling facility structure is to host the note pad, you need to understand the potential consequences of various naming schemes on structure selection for note pad placement. The note pad name is also used by security administrators to establish security profiles that control access to note pad functions and resources. So you need to understand how XCF uses the note pad name when making calls to the Security Authorization Facility (SAF) to determine whether a program is permitted to access note pad resources.