RE: Interesting article...

["Wilt, Charles" <CWilt@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of
> ron_adams@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Sent: Wednesday, May 04, 2005 4:05 PM
> To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
> Subject: RE: Interesting article...
> 
> 
<snip>
> Now, maybe I don't understand the problem very well, and I'm 
> sure somebody 
> at least as bright as me probably raised the same question at 
> the time, 
> but why couldn't they just roll the system date, and cleanup the mess 
> afterward? Wouldn't this have temporarily fixed the issue, or am I 
> over-simplifying? I know this would have been a band-aid, but 
> when you're 
> talking about an incident of this magnitude, sometimes a 
> quick-fix is all 
> you can do until you can resolve the real problem.  I'm sure 
> it's a lot 
> more complicated than that, and it wasn't a reasonable 
> option, otherwise 
> they would have executed it right?
> 

Probably thought about it.  I'd imagine that rolling forward would have worked 
fine.  The problem would have been rolling backward to get back to the correct 
date at some point.  Likely, the time and effort to figure out what kinds of 
problems this would have caused and how to correct them would have been 
significant.  

Programmers just don't expect time to flow backward <grin>  Look at IBM's 
recomdations for testing future dates:
1) Save entire system
2) Move Date forward
3) Do testing
4) Wipe system and reinstall from backup while resetting date.

In addition, I'd imagine that the crew schedules generated by the system are 
under the watch of the FAA.  I'm sure the government inspectors would be real 
understanding when you tell them that the schedule dated 1-1-05 was actually 
for 12-16-04.  ;-)


Charles Wilt
iSeries Systems Administrator / Developer
Mitsubishi Electric Automotive America
ph: 513-573-4343
fax: 513-398-1121