Re: ** BPCS S/36 4.4B to AS400 BPCS 6.1Mixed Mode ** -- BPCS-L

> Subj:     ** BPCS System/36 4.4B to AS400 BPCS 6.1Mixed Mode **
>  From:        Forwiw@aol.com (Sandy)
>  
>  After talking to SSA help line, they were sure such a conversion doesn't     
>  exist.  

This is outside the area of responsibility of SSA help line.
They will support various official Y2K compliant versions of BPCS.
Conversions are not their cup of tea.

SSA can also sell you stuff that is not supported by the help line.
Check the EDI thread for additional comments that are also relevant here.

You need to track down your company's official SSA account representative - 
this is the person who knows what your company has bought from SSA, such as 
support, and what support you can get from what divisions of SSA other than 
the help line, such as where they answer conversion questions.

> But I looked again at the tapes that were labeled (from SSA)

SSA can also send you old stuff that is no longer supported by SSA.
Once upon a time they supported BPCS/36
Once upon a time they had conversion software from BPCS/36 to 2.0.etc. & 
supported it.
Over time the earlier versions lost support, but SSA still had the conversion 
tools & can be persuaded to ship them to customers, with the understanding 
that the software is provided as-is with no support from SSA, as part of the 
standard contracts.

Your predecessors, who jumped ship, probably understood this.

> and there is a tape for S/36 conversion to BPCS 2.0.9.  

The S/36 conversion to BPCS 2.0.09 is for files that have been RESTORE/36 so 
that they are in the right format for BPCS software to act on them, which 
means they have to be saved the right way from S/36 --- our S/36 backups had 
been SAVE ALL FILES as a group, which did not RESTORE 36 right for this - in 
other words I could not use our regular daily backup restored to AS/400 for 
BPCS conversion, I had to create a separate save run in the right format for 
the tape to RESTORE 36 in the right format for BPCS to be able to digest the 
incoming data.

Figuring this out, took some help from our BPCS conversion consultants & the 
people who provided our AS/436 hardware support.  I was handicapped by not 
having OS/400 education from IBM until after the conversion.

> Then apply the ptf.
>  Go through several more tapes, then finally a cd conversion to BPCS
>  6.1.00 GA
>  
>  Once I started reading the instructions, its looks like I have to actually
>  install BPCS Ver 2.0.9. environment? 

No you do not - the instructions are contradictory & incomplete - there are 
several layers of corrections to corrections.  What you are working with are 
the files containing your corporate records, and SSA's conversion software, 
which has bugs all the way through, and the software that someone will have 
to write to work around the bugs at various stages, that are determined to be 
a problem for your data.

This will require personnel who comprehend SSA logic, and relevant 
programming know-how such as some mixture of RPG/400 DDS CL SQL, in which 
very little S/36 know-how will help you.

> I don't have the AS400 experience needed to feel comfortable, 

You are in exactly the situation I was in in the Fall of 1997 & Spring of 
1998.  It took me several weeks of IBM classes to get the know-how neccessary 
to do a competent job here, but the conversion was completed before any of 
the relevant classes.  I did get some classes on topics of system security & 
administration & backup before the conversion completed, enough to tell me 
that we had done an awful lot of things wrong, but not enough to tell me how 
to fix it.

> but there is help at our other plants that do.  But they have enough to do.

You are like Jim Cannon struggling with EDI without management support for 
the education needed to do the job right, except his disaster will just cost 
the jobs of a bunch of people - his company will survive - yours could go 
down the tubes with everyone out of work, and you blamed, because management 
told you to do something & did not give you the tools to get the job done - 
those other people who jumped ship probably saw what was coming & you need to 
join them.

I was brought up in the computing world where the concept of a technician 
jumping ship in the middle of a conversion was the worst form of treason a 
technician could possibly do, and should be black listed from any future 
trust by all of government & industry in that profession.  However, 
downsizing, and other business practices in recent decades have undermined 
some of my beliefs in loyalty & duty.

There can come a point where the handwriting is on the wall & you have to 
jump ship.

>  We are running our BPCS 4.4B version as a guest of the AS400. 

We were in that boat until about a year ago, except heavily modified BPCS 4.4 
below B & hardware = AS/436.

>  There is an option for full conversion or one for single file conversion. 

We had a BPCS business consultant from Crowe Chizek visit for one day, who 
helped us immensely in determining which files really needed to be converted, 
such as Item master routings BOM, Vendor master, and which not, like 
histories, and at what points in the SSA conversion there were new fields 
that would need to be populated & where it made the most sense for us to 
populate them.

We also had someone from Crowe Chizek come in for a day to educate me in BPCS 
logic - his text book was the official on-line BPCS documentation SSA LOG 00 
& I would have been much better off working with environments & conversion 
steps around 2.0.09 had I had that education first.
 
> I would like to only convert the customer master file and maybe a few 
others.  
> I have no idea how long this will take, or how this will turn out.

Get a novel or collection of short stories because you will need to calm your 
nerves while waiting on various steps to do their thing then ask you to take 
some menu options that you will wish could be automated.  When you take a 
step, you will not know if it will need you in 5 minutes or 5 hours.  As you 
do the work, watch out for stages that are good stopping points, so you can 
have 2 days of rest before going for the next ordeal.  You will need to learn 
how to work OS/400 QUERY & DFU or some other tools to randomly check files at 
various steps to make sure the data is there & not garbaged.  One thing I 
found to be extremely irritating is when a bug struck & trashed my work & I 
did not catch it until 20 some hours of processing later that now was wasted.

>  I am not sure if I have to save files (from the S/36 environment) and 
> restore the S/36 files to the AS400 first or if the conversion tape will 
take them 
>  from the S/36 environment to the AS400.

I wasn't either - the BPCS documentation is clear as mud & somewhere it says 
that this should not be attempted by anyone who is not technically competent 
in OS/400.  You need to verify that you are in S/36 environment as opposed to 
S/36 machine.

We have S/36 running as a batch on OS/400, launched via STRM36 F4 M3601 M36 
whose files are not valid OS/400 objects.  If you are really S/36 environment 
on OS/400, as opposed to S/36 machine running as a guest on AS/436, then your 
solution path will not be identical to ours.  For clarification of this 
terminology, you might like to check the AS/400 encyclopaedia @
http://www.as400.ibm.com/encycl/volume.htm

>  I read something about a Q??? S/36 file library.  It does exist on our 
> system.

There is a paradigm shift going from S/36 to OS/400.
On S/36 you had files on hard disk, and libraries containing software.
On OS/400 everything is in a library, including files.
Libraries are divided into Files which are divided into members.

The standard naming convention for software is QxxxSRC where xxx is the type 
of software member such as RPG.  You need some OS/400 education bad & I 
thought I was hurting when I was in this condition 2 years ago, but your 
company is running out of time for Y2K compliancy, and sounds like management 
is still in denial regarding what it takes to get the job done.

We had to put our BPCS/36 files into a Q library at a particular stage of the 
conversion, but it was very temporary.  Normally files do not go into Q 
libraries.

On S/36, IBM objects started with # or $
On OS/400, IBM objects are named starting with the letter Q
This is also used for some standard architectures.

>  I have won this position after a couple of managers have jumped ship.  
> It's only me.

I do not think I threw away our conversion notes - they are buried some place 
at the office - I will try to dig them up & identify which documents we used, 
so you won't be struggling with the obsolete SSA documents we knew had 
subsequent updates.

You should have stuff that was printed by SSA & you should have SSA diskettes 
for PC that contain additional conversion documents, and there may also be 
some on OSG.
>  
>  Thanks to all who have responded.
>  
>  Sandy
>  
>  But how will they be externally defined?
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