Endevor

Is there currently a recommended total number of elements in a package.  I know there used to be, I don't know whether there is today.

I think more than ever, "it depends". 

Dependencies include but aren't limited to:

1) What actions are you performing? Generate? Move? Delete? With history? Without history?

2) Do you have CAPS (concurrent action processing) enabled?

3) How many packages did you want to execute at the same time? 

4) Do you have VSAM/RLS enabled?

I knew in the old days it used to be suggested to keep the contents in the low thousands, but with the advancement of streamlining ideas and "best practices" (and CAPS), I would suggest your limit is going to have to be determined based on what you're doing....

Interestingly a couple of years ago I did a large migration of elements from an in-house written SCM tool to Endevor, we also re-generated all elements as part of this process. We had CAPS, VSAM/RLS enabled and a quick box to run it on but from what I remember I still had to limit the packages to about 5,000 elements each as after that the amount the processing time for each individual element seemed to increase. I assume this was down to an overhead for some of the processing done for each element in the job. So you're right 'it depends' but I would say there definitely is an upper limit before you start seeing performance degradation.

You do also have to consider Type Sequencing & Ship. You may want all elements in a single package so they are processed in the correct order or so you can ship them together even if that does give you some performance degradation.