Re: "Record in use" message & resulting mess -- BPCS-L

Is my understanding correct that when this message gets to the user they are 
often faced with a selection of say 10 bad choices in which they are expected 
to know an awful lot about the application and the specific program to select 
right path to take & that we are better off if this situation never faces the 
end users?  That is to say that to the greatest extent practical our software 
should deal with the situation & pass it on to the end user only as a last 
resort?

When message has to go to end user, instead of sending IBM or SSA standard, 
we can substitute our own with text that says to check on the other user or 
use such & such an option from menu in another session to check the call 
stack of other user, in other words connect to where recovery options are 
spelled out & make the process more user friendly.  Am I correct that this is 
doable?

If the IBM message gets to the end user it is because the program is ignoring 
the problem, am I correct?  It does not matter what program language, there 
is a way to programmatically determine that there is a conflict, send the 
user a special message, then act upon the user reply in a controlled way.

With CL it is MONMSG & particular kind of SNDMSG.
With RPG & SQL there are indicators associated with the methodology used to 
access the records ... CHAIN or READ .... direct or cursor ... there is some 
indicator flag setting that tells the program that the attempt to access this 
record failed ... it could be because there is no such record, we are beyond 
end of file in our looping, or that the record is locked.  To determine which 
is the situation, and have the logic deal appropriately with which it is, 
there is a special data structure with RPG and special codes with SQL, and 
the programming of this is not straight forward, simple or easy, but there 
should be some place we can go to copy from where it has been done before, 
suitably annotated to explain what is going on to the programmer who is not 
of Jedi Master caliber.

Am I correct in my understanding that when "record in use" gets to end user & 
they are faced with pick from 10 bad choices, that the software involved must 
have been written by a programmer who is either less than a Jedi Master at 
the art, or facing deadlines that did not allow for a professional job?

I know where to go to learn to be a Jedi Master of programming.  It is a hard 
road.
I used to be one on S/3x, except I did not have to do interactive programming 
since the MRT NRT days & I hated that, and probably was not as real good at 
it as I should have been.
I am already in training to be a Jedi Master of programming on the 400 but I 
have a ways to go & my users are hurting right now.  I am looking for short 
cuts to resolve this particular scenario in the most critical of the programs 
where a user mis step can put a lot of stuff at risk. 

I figure that scores of programs are having this problem with users given 10 
bad choices, and there are many locations within many programs that need this 
coding upgrade, and there may be too many places needing detailed repairs to 
be able to get the job done in reasonable time.

I suspect that if we complain to SSA, and seek to have it put into a future 
enhancement, we may see a fix in version 9 but if our company will never go 
there we will have to do our own fix.

If I have to write the code to handle this, I want to write it one time, then 
have other scebaruis share the logic so I do not have to figure it all out 
repetitively.  Is the code already some place, like have some SSA programmers 
done the job right in some programs & it is a matter of fixing the programs 
that SSA missed, by copying from the good stuff?  Can someone point me at 
examples of BPCS programs that solve this professionally?

It would probably be too easy if there was some place in SSA source code that 
had a template showing step by step what ought to be done.
It would be too easy if there was some pre-existing SYS standard program to 
call, sending it the particulars of what record of what file we are trying to 
access & it would do all the dirty work of sending messages to all the 
players in conflict for access, and then when conflict gone, letting the 
update program retry the current update.
So this takes me to a request for URLs of where I would find examples of 
correct code outside of BPCS.
Sume of it may be in the hand outs from my Jedi Master of Programming classes.

MacWheel99@aol.com (Alister Wm Macintyre) (Al Mac)
AS/400 Data Manager & Programmer for BPCS 405 CD Rel-02 mixed mode (twinax 
interactive & batch) @ http://www.cen-elec.com Central Industries of 
Indiana--->Quality manufacturer of wire harnesses and electrical 
sub-assemblies - fax # 812-424-6838

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