Re: Mystery files

Suggestions from Al Macintyre.

1. Check out BPCS_L archives on REORG such as SYS120 ... ours is via menu SYS 
option 23 then option 12 ... many of these updates have to be done in a very 
careful sequence with respect to each other & end month ... some are 
extremely hazardous to be running any time other than end month.

For some strange reason the job that gets rid of all the ILI records that 
have zero on-hand some location item combination ... that job takes all of 3 
minutes to run, but the one that gets rid of all the IWI records that have 
zero on-hand some warehouse item combination ... that job takes all of 3 
hours to run.  Our ratio of ILI locations to IWI warehouses is magnificent, 
but the run times seem backwards to expected.

2. After you have done SYS120 a couple times (we do ours at least weekly) & 
compared list of what it DOES reorg, compared to what NEEDS to be reorged, 
you will discover that the SSA alphabet for reorg does not extend to the 
letter Z - in our BPCS version the alphabet ends in letter V.  So you will 
need to check out some file layouts to see how soft delete coding is 
structured, then very carefully use the OS/400 file reorg option for those 
outside the official SSA alphabet.

3. There are some files that BPCS collects data in to infinity, that we might 
not want collected to infinity.  This is version sensitive.  For example I 
recently wrote a program to analyse our resupply orders & delete any that are 
4 months past due ... hey if we not going to do them right away they aint 
going to be done.  We also found records in our GJW & other files that were 
coded complete years ago but never went away.

4. We used DSPFD *ALL to an *OUTFILE then Query/400 against that to review 
some factoids & this was extremely eye opening.  There are files with 
excessive numbers of members that are empty & not been used in years.  I 
recently bumped heads against this when adding a new logical & learning that 
there is an upper limit on how many members in a logical & we far beyond that 
limit.

If you do something like that, multiply number of hard deleted records 
against record size to get an idea of volume of bytes wasted.  We have a 
query that does this every other day & when the wasted total rises to a 
certain threshhold that tells me it is time to run another SY120.

5. Several people have written software to automate tasks of clean up stuff 
that SSA has neglected to supply us & perhaps the most sophisticated of all 
of this is BPCS LITE from UPI ... check out 
http://www.unbeatenpathintl.com/services.html ... get to Bells & Whistles & 
then to MORE

>  From:    tshaw@felkerbrothers.com (Terri Harteau)

>  Hi,
>      I was investigating why our BPCSF library is growing, and discovered 
> some files I didn't know about.  We are on V6.0.4, mixed mode.  We are not 
> using lot control. My question is can I delete, clear, or purge these 
files? 
> Does BPCS have purge programs available? Some of these files have records 
> going back to 1998! Most of these files have hundreds of thousands of 
records.
> 
>  
>  EIL            Invoiced Lot File
>  IPP           Pick List File
>  MBI           ECO Event Log (from MBM reorg?)
>  ZEF          Order Entry Error File
>  ZPD          Print Detail Workfile
>  ZQWAP    Queue Work File - Activity
>  ZQWRP    Queue Work File - Response  
>  
>  Thanks for any ideas.
>  
>  Terri Harteau


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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