Re: regarding the groups question of the DB definitions course offered by SSA...

There is software supplied by SSA within the XREF area that we are not using 
at Central because the requirements to make it work essentially corrupt our 
security beyond the compromises we have reached with how SSA security is 
structured.

Perhaps what is needed is for someone to fix XREF so that it will work for an 
OS/400 programmer profile or BPCS security officer inside the BPCS library 
list, without requiring elevation of same to *ALLOBJ level.  SSA has done a 
great job of creating a great tool, but it is messed up on the security 
requirements to run it.  

My main gripe is that XREF only works if we change the Group Profile that 
EVERYONE is a member of, to become an IBM OS/400 MASTER SECURITY OFFICER, 
then sign on as THAT profile, to run XREF.  Well I do not want to give 
everyone master security officer privileges ... that is the equivalent of no 
security at all.

To get some measure of the same kind of info, I have been struggling with 
DSPOBJ & DSPFFD to *OUTFILE then query the results, but what I have created 
is not in the XREF league.  If there is interest here, I can spell out the CL 
I use to capture reference data from BPCS structure.  Initially I used this 
to tell me which files needed reorgs, and who has access to which menus, and 
which programs on which menus are actually not being used, but now we use it 
to get an alphabetized list of what BPCS queries we have, and I am working on 
connecting which queries are not on any menu.  This is an evolving idea as we 
discover more uses for this kind of thinking.  Our latest addition is a BPCS 
menu option to give RUNQRY of user choice without that user being able to get 
to a command line.

> What I would like to see is a tool which
>  if run on any BPCS version, should generate the following:
>  file details, field details, file-file relationship, field -field 
> relationship, program-file relationships.

My hand is up as eager to accept Ian Bunn's wonderful free offer.  

T h a n k y o u    S i r

I am in Evansville Indiana USA
Company address is 1325 East Virginia Street
Personal address is 5184 Normandy Court

Also if you have been on BPCS_L for a while, you know I periodically tout 
great products for BPCS that my employer has not aquired, because I think all 
BPCS users should be aware of the great stuff that is out there ... do you 
have some other products I should be considering when I do this ... do you 
have a web site?

What will be the "rights" to the intellectual property you plan to share?
Will we have the right to pass it on to other BPCS customers whom we might 
meet in the future, either on this list or at BPCS user conferences, giving 
you credit for the creation, like share ware?
Is this something that logically should be placed on someone's web site for 
freely accessible downloading, or does it potentially infringe on SSA 
intellectual property such that it only ought to go to known BPCS customers?  
i.e. A lot of BPCS info is not available to companies that service BPCS 
customers, due to SSA intellectual property rights.  I hope my remarks here 
do not put the kibosh on a wonderful offer.

SSA Canada MIGHT get some revenue by offering the DB definitions on diskette 
or CD Rom in a form that customers unwilling to spend the $2 grand for 
minimum class, but might be willing to spend significantly less for the class 
handouts, then after using them for a while, the associated documentation 
would raise an interest in attending the class in the future.  While this 
might cut into some sales of the full class, I suspect that if properly 
packaged there would be a great volume sales & decent profit margin on 
selling just the class handouts.

Currently I am a couple days behind in reading my e-mail due to the 
vociferous discussion of IBM's rebranding announcement & the iWire newsletter 
analysis of the long term implications of this, and some other reasons.  I 
intend to study what other people say on BPCS_L then mention anything more I 
think we may have missed anything that I think is important to include in 
such a tool, your time & talents & resources permitting.

Although the folks on BPCS_L are quite knowlegeable about such topics, there 
is a range of know-how & we often trying to serve co-workers whose knowledge 
is even less.  My particular situation is BPCS 405 CD & we got here from 
BPCS/36 in which it seems to me that 95% of the DB logic that was true for 
BPCS/36 is also true for BPCS 405 CD but a bunch of new files were added in 
405 CD that did not exist on 36.

My management has not seen fit to buy AS/Set for my use, but some of the 
AS/Set files came with some of the PTF & BMR upgrades, so we have just the 
RPG source code.

The kinds of issues that have been of great concern to us in recent months 
have included:

When do records go away "naturally" assuming proper cycle of transactions & 
End-Fiscal?  We have files containing records that are many years old & we 
consider them to be dead ... for example BPCS/36 had BIL900 to get rid of 
finished EC* records, but BPCS 405 CD has no such utility.  On the other 
hand, Invoice History records remained in existance to infinity on BPCS/36, 
and I have now determined that those more than a year old are no longer on 
our system.

What all updates costs? ... we periodically get some very strange cost 
errors, like negatives in previous levels & tracking them down can be 
extremely time consuming.

We also have items in which the standard cost & actual cost have grave 
discrepancies ... we are making a profit if you compare standard cost to 
price, but we are making a loss when you look at actual cost ... we drill 
down to determine which components have the discrepancies but none account 
for the grand total difference ... in other words if you add up everything 
that goes into the actual costs of parts, they do not agree with what is in 
the end customer actual cost & the differences can be significant, like 
standard cost of an item that has over 100 components might be $75.00 & 
actual cost $200.00 but when we total up the individual components actual 
costs through BOM & routing data it comes to like $80.00.

What all updates prices?  ... we periodically get what used to be a valid 
price that someone accidentally zeroed out ... where are all the places this 
could happen?

I am not asking that you answer these kinds of questions, only showing the 
kinds of things that we look for, that better tools for navigating BPCS data 
base inter-relationships might help us with.

Al Macintyre  ©¿©
MIS Manager Green Screen Programmer & Computer Janitor of BPCS 405 CD Rel-02 
running on AS/400 V4R3 http://www.cen-elec.com Central Industries of 
Indiana--->Quality manufacturer of wire harnesses and electrical 
sub-assemblies
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