Re: trimming trailing blanks in spooled output...

   Al,

   When you need to drive a nail, do you make your own hammer, or do you go
   buy one? There are tools that allow you to do everything you have
   described.

   Does your boss still use a Windows 3.1 PC? With all due respect, not
   paying software maintenance fees can be penny wise and pound foolish,
   especially with regard to the IBM software. IBM gets real cranky if you
   don't keep current. I have one client in Indiana who let their V5R2
   agreement expire (maybe it's an Indiana thing). They are looking at a
   currency fee of $32,000 just to renew their contract so that they could
   pay to get a new contract for the operating system. Guess what? The
   Microsoft people got their hooks into that company, and they are going to
   the dark side and abandoning the best platform and application software
   for their business.
   Just like the commercial said, "You can pay me now or pay me later".

   My 2 cents
   -- 

   Paul Nelson
   Arbor Solutions, Inc.
   708-670-6978  Cell
   pnelson@xxxxxxxxxx
   -----midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote: -----

     To: midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
     From: Al Mac <macwheel99@xxxxxxxxxxx>
     Sent by: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
     Date: 12/05/2006 12:29PM
     Subject: Re: trimming trailing blanks in spooled output...

       Thanks Paul

       I also have fried tapes ... just about anything can get fried, so I
       believe in redundancy for any long term storage off-line.  Different
       things fail different ways.  I not sufficiently an expert on the
       technology to know how come some things have died, other than the
     obvious
       tangle.  I suspect shelf life, and tapes being stored flat instead of
     on
       edge.  My general rule of storage thumb ... if it is comfortable for
       humans, ALL THE TIME, including when humans not there, it is probably
     safe
       for magnetic media.

       Almost every time we have done a hardware upgrade, the tape media
     evolves,
       so we are at high risk of having our archives on tapes that are for
       hardware no longer available.  I knew one place that had a burglary,
     they
       went to their directory of hardware resources & found they could not
       replace their backup hardware, so their offsite backups no good for
     that
       reason (not an AS/400 reality).  Fortunately for us, several of the
     3rd
       party outfits have a museum of old working S/34 S/36 you name it, so
     that
       if some client needs to access some archives, they can do it, provided
     the
       media is readable.

       Auditors recently changed for us because top owners changed.  I expect
       they will have a learning curve.  I strive to get them what they ask
     for,
       on whatever media they ask for it on, but also warn them in advance.
      This
       report, that you asking for, will be XXX,XXX pages, in a format that
       cannot be imported into Excel, and it will be unintelligible to
     Microsoft,
       using the technology our company has invested in so far.

       I recently modified one of the General Ledger reports so its output is
       intelligible to Microsoft, and I am getting a parade of requests to
     run
       THAT program for various past fiscal periods accounts.  This tells me
     that
       there has been some progress on a learning curve, with respect to some
     of
       what I had been trying to communicate.  They got what they asked for,
     and
       it did not help them.  Then they got a new version of the software for
       last end month, and want that new version retroactive, vs. the
     original
       old data.

       Getting them reports they need on a one time basis, that recently got
     run,
       is a different challenge than figuring out what to do with reports
     from a
       year ago that we need to keep, not know when someone will want access.
       Right now my boss has got me running ragged, creating reports and
     sending
       them to Excel, because he is more comfortable figuring things out from
       there, than from the original application's DB2.

       I have developed tons of purge programs, over time add more.

       We are still on V5R1 because of a reluctance to pay through the nose
     for
       BPCS license move off our AS/400 model 170 to another box.  Some day
     it
       will die of old age, and we'll have to address how to get our stuff to
     a
       box that accepts V5R1, migrate as high as it will go, then do again on
     a
       contemporary box.

       -
       Al Macintyre
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:AlMac
      http://www.ryze.com/go/Al9Mac
       BPCS/400 Computer Janitor ... see
      http://radio.weblogs.com/0107846/stories/2002/11/08/bpcsDocSources.html
     --
     This is the Midrange Systems Technical Discussion (MIDRANGE-L) mailing
     list
     To post a message email: MIDRANGE-L@xxxxxxxxxxxx
     To subscribe, unsubscribe, or change list options,
     visit: http://lists.midrange.com/mailman/listinfo/midrange-l
     or email: MIDRANGE-L-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx
     Before posting, please take a moment to review the archives
     at http://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l.