Re: backups on AS/400, objects

Al

>Well of course system history helps us identify who was on when, if we want
>to take the trouble to dig, but what I seek is a corporate policy of
>cooperation with what they want MIS to do, that is economical.

Sorry, I was only referring to your selective amnesia comment. I merely 
meant that you could "cure" their amnesia.

Before responding to some other things in your post, I do know where you're 
coming from. I well remember what ranks as possibly on of the stupidest 
comments I have ever heard which came from someone in the collections 
department.

When asked 3 times to log off to allow end of month processing to commence 
(it was the last calendar day of the month) the following exchange took place:

User "Why do I have to log off"
Me "So we can do end of month processing"
User "How often does THAT happen ?!?!?"

True story <sigh>

>The original poster in this thread had a somewhat different interest I
>believe.
>
>It is not economical for me to be doing long distance phone calls to remote
>sites to try to determine if the people are really there or gone home & left
>their work stations in the middle of update programs.

I find WRKACTJOB gives me a reasonable fix on this (on those days I feel 
like playing nice). If you WRKACTJOB and look in the interactive susbystem, 
take a command 11, column INT will indicate whether any activity is taking 
place. You can watch the numbers change - 0 indicates no activity. I think 
this indicates Interactions but I'm open to correction.

I have to confess to generally killing sessions unless I feel generous. A 
small pleasure when you have to work late :)

>I do send message, but unfortunately we do have novice users not yet able to
>recognize messages, let alone repond to them.  Fortunately not many of those
>people doing update programs.
>
>This is one of the reasons I take the whole system down for backup.
>Just imagine if we were doing some other kind of save & people signed on in
>middle of it.


To be honest, I can't imagine not taking the system down for backup - or 
at  least the portions of it that I required. The other suggestions were 
good, but here's another one. Create a subsystem that allows only certain 
workstations or users to access it: if possible ensure they can only access 
the allowed function, even if you have to create a profile that executes 
the function they are allowed to use.

>I have hard enough time with my boss during EOM ... there are some jobs that
>need only ONE user on running this or that job step, until it is done ...
>second user locks up the job & guess who ... most of the lockups are within
>the same department that knows this & supposed to enforce only one user until
>those jobs completed.

Are you able to enforce the one user limit ? I usually write to people once 
I have an agreement to confirm the agreement and to tell them how I'm going 
to make them stick to it, to prevent "accidents". You need to enforce this 
if at all possible.

>We have had a bunch of crashes with inventory transactions to general ledger
>& every single one of them traced to the people who do that work being
>impatient & going to next step before first step completed.

Cheers
Evan Harris

> > Al
> >
> >  dumb question, but won't either the workstation/user profile tell you 
> from
> >  the log who it was ?
> >
> >  Cheers
> >  Evan
> >
> >
> >  >People assume the system is available to them any time they want to use
>it,
> >  >then if you ask who was on at a particular time, they all have selective
> >  >amnesia.
>
>MacWheel99@aol.com (Alister Wm Macintyre) (Al Mac)
>AS/400 Data Manager & Programmer for BPCS 405 CD Rel-02 mixed mode (twinax
>interactive & batch) @ http://www.cen-elec.com Central Industries of
>Indiana--->Quality manufacturer of wire harnesses and electrical
>sub-assemblies - fax # 812-424-6838
>
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