Re: Billing process for BPCS 4.03 / 4.05 and Workstation members

From Al Macintyre BPCS 405 CD

I imagine 403 is very similar to 405 CD, except for whatever you did to get 
Y2K Ok.

SSA Tech Support also has several helpful documents on this general topic.

You have come to an "expert" on recovering from Interactive Billing Crashes & 
other mishaps ... now if we could only prevent these things in the first 
place, and if I can hone my lack of skill on explaining these things. I am 
familiar with recovering from BIL500 crashes ... I have no experience with 
any in BIL600.

We used to have a lot more crashes in the past than we have had in recent 
months, and generally when there is a crash, the odds are pretty high that in 
effort to recover from the crash we collectively manage to make things worse, 
much worse.

We also have cases of bad information accepted at one stage that we try to 
fix before it is populated into many more places.

This is a complex jigsaw puzzle with many pieces.

You need to understand how BPCS names the work station data areas, which is 
thoroughly documented in the on-line LOGIC manual, then after you see that, 
you can use IBM tools to display the contents of those work station areas 
before & after doing a reset at SYS993C I think it is off the SYS reorg menu 
... we copied selected fix programs to our own FXS user menu for power user 
help desk repairs.  This might not be your situation, but ours includes users 
having crashes, not telling anyone, trying to recover on their own & adding 
to the overall complications.  

If there was an earlier crash from some work station that never got cleaned 
up, then someone tries to do Billing from that work station, it will process 
some of the data from the earlier batch a second time, creating some 
duplicate records in your receivables, not a pleasant scenario.  There then 
becomes the challenge of figuring out which RAR records to delete & if 
anything else needs to be cleaned up.

We have the same kind of scenario with batches in other applications.

ECH has an "in use" activity flag that goes "Yes" when various programs 
updating the customer order, so as to block conflict with other folks 
updating the same customer order at the same time.  If you have a crash of 
the job that is doing that update, such as ORD500 on a PC that goes down, 
then that flag is never reset ... we reset ours using DFU & we added a query 
to list all orders that currently have that flag thrown, so that in the 
evening, after everyone has gone home for day & none need to be thrown, we 
can reset whatever needs resetting.

You do not want to be resetting this willy nilly, since someone might 
legitimately be updating an order through regular BPCS processes.  
Identifying who that is, is possible via GO CMDLCK but these IBM tools are 
not anyone-friendly, in my opinion.

If you are interested in this general topic, I suggest you check out DISPLAY 
ACTIVE BPCS JOBS 3rd party shareware tool available from 
http://www.precosis.com.au/piu1.htm - this DSPBPSACT also comes as part of 
the REMOTE VIEW product http://www.precosis.com.au/rv1.htm in which when 
people go home & leave their work station sessions signed on, an MIS person 
can transmit F3 F12 etc. to those jobs & get them to a safe conclusion 
without having to physically go to that person's work station or know their 
PC password.

This is a solution to a problem that might not be the case at your site.

BBL also has a field ... I not remember which one ... I will have to check my 
notes at office & send you another post ... that needs to be reset for every 
record in the BBL after a Billing crash so that you can do a retry of the 
whole process.

So ...in summary.
You need to be aware of whether this was a simple crash - one time event - or 
complicated by user efforts to untangle a mess & instead may have made it 
more involved.
You need to know a list of all the orders involved so you can reset ECH "in 
use" flag.
You need to go thru 100% of the BBL records - we use DFU
You need to reset the Workstation data area involved
& last but not least
something caused this crash ... you need to resolve whatever that was.

Alister William Macintyre 
Computer Data Janitor etc. of BPCS 405 CD Rel-02 on IBM e-Server i-Series 400 
model 170 OS4 V4R3 @ http://www.cen-elec.com Central Industries of 
Indiana--->Quality manufacturer of wire harnesses and electrical 
sub-assemblies

>  From:    daniel.schlachter@cibasc.com (Schlachter Daniel CF CH)
>  
>  Dear all,
>  
>  I'm looking for some documentation concerning the Billing process BIL500 
and
>  BIL600 in BPCS version 4.03 or 4.05. My concern is how das BPCS update and
>  work with the Workstation members specially for ECH, ECL, BBH, BBL and how
>  can we fix the system if the interactive Billing crashes. 
>  
>  Daniel Schlachter
>  Ciba Specialty Chemicals
>  Corporate Finance, Information Management
>  Application Suppport (CF5.5)
>  Internet:    Daniel.Schlachter@cibasc.com

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