Inventory History -- BPCS-L

We are on BPCS 405 CD and just got a problem which I am summarizing here.

Hopefully if I am missing some nuance, someone can point me in a good direction.

I am extremely experienced with BPCS but when something goes wrong that has never before happened to us, I can be nervous what all needs to be done for resolution.

This weekend EOM (end of month) went reasonably normal, but Monday it was discovered that Inventory History is missing from INV300 F21.

Looks like file ITH got trashed.
It now has 150,000 records.
It should have over 1 million.

System Parameters appear normal ... calling for us to keep over a year of history on line.

I have a backup/400 (SAVE 21) that was run before any 900 jobs in the end month.

We are not on OSG, but use other tech support that needs boss approval before they are called, because we pay for support by the call. I have asked for that approval in this case, because there are some complications to be resolved, with which my experience doing so is zero. I basically feel like I need some hand holding in places.

My prime suspect is INV900 which I know updates a heck of a lot more than just the ITH file. I have not yet made a list of the other files, let alone figure out how I can tell if anything haywire with them.

Strategically what I think needs to be done: * Recover ITH records from the backup eve of EOM, combine them with ITH posted this month so far, and reconstruct their interlinking with IIM file so that BPCS operations can continue as if nothing had ever gone wrong; * figure out if anything else is corrupted, and deal with that; * figure out how this happened, so as to try to prevent it happening in some other later EOM, such as the very next one; * add something to our EOM check list so that if stuff like this goes wrong again in some future EOM, the EOM person can detect that it happened when more convenient to deal with it than the current reality; * when this crisis is over, provide assurance to AL and management that everything that needed to get cleaned up was in fact cleaned up.

My tentative plan for recovering our Inventory History: * Plan on doing this some weekend like next weekend ... get all the software and how to figured out in time for that. * Everyone off BPCS except folks working on fixing this. * Backup/400 safety at very start of the process, in case anything go wrong in the efforts * That takes just under 2 hours * Current ITH get copied some place else library for reference to help in the continuing repair effort. Al believes this will contain transactions posted since the EOM and may also contain history on deleted items. * This would probably go pretty fast ... a matter of minutes. * From Fri nite Aug 27 backup/400 tape, restore the ITH file and ONLY the ITH file, using 400 option to combine on disk any records from the backup tape that aint there now * I need to review IBM 400 documentation on the particulars of what can be done and how to do it, because it has been a very long time since I last used 400 restoration stuff * Restore always takes a heck of a lot longer than I think reasonable ... this could be a couple hours just to restore one file. * At this point we should have almost all the data we need, but BPCS not yet able to access it, and if anyone does any BPCS transactions before the ITH/IIM remapping completed, they could be corrupted. * It might be smart to copy the ITH that is on disk from the restore to some other library for reference to help with the recovery effort. * It may be neccessary to run some IBM 400 job to combine the ITH that was copied before the restore with the ITH that was restored. * ITH vs. IIM tracking numbers need resequencing, so that INV300 and other BPCS can correctly access inventory history, and continued inventory transactions will be posted correctly * Hopefully our tech support has a program to do that, so Al not have to reinvent that wheel ... it is NOT simple software to write and verify it working right * Al no idea how long this would take to run, possibly a few hours * Problem not how long it takes but getting that software correct in a timely manner * We need some way of checking that everything is Ok * Backup/400 safety at very end of this process * Aggregate time estimate ... if nothing goes haywire along the way ...9 hours or less * People may get back on BPCS 400 for normal operations. I need to review what command functions to use to copy files so as not to mess up the logicals, pointing wrong places.

- Al Macintyre http://www.ryze.com/go/Al9Mac Find BPCS Documentation Suppliers http://radio.weblogs.com/0107846/stories/2002/11/08/bpcsDocSources.html BPCS/400 Computer Janitor at http://www.globalwiretechnologies.com/