Re: BMR bundle (yes/no)? -- BPCS-L

dear ms novak,

thank you for this narrative!. certainly the management of BMR's is the most 
complicated part of keeping our bpcs system running, and knowing how to manage 
them most effectively is valuable.

but your narrative raises two immediate questions!
1. why not prepare a supported cum package that includes all known bmr's at a 
given point in time? from the process that you describe, if i want to stay 
current and get the known BMR's applied to my system, i can just request a BMR 
explosion from you perhaps once a quarter. it would seem to me that if several 
clients were doing this on a recurring basis, you would be forever creating and 
distributing BMR bundles, and each one would be different. why not create a BMR 
bundle periodically once for the whole system and make it available to clients 
that are interested? this sure seems like a lot less work on your part!
2. in your narrative you mentioned Version 6.1.02. where did that come from? i 
have specifically called the help desk and the account rep and was told that 
the most current version of bpcs (version 6) is version 6.1.01 and that i 
needed to order a BMR bundle explosion of this release to get all of the 
additional BMR's that have been released since the V6.1.01 cum package. so what 
is the current status of version 6.1.xx?

sincerely
chick doe
barton instrument systems
>>> novakg@ssax.com 07/13/01 09:35AM >>>
Hello,

I suggest that you direct complaints about lack of cumulatives through your
SSA GT account or sales representatives, so that your concerns are more
formally presented to SSA GT management.

One thing which is available now to customers is a personalized 'bundle' of
BMRs created by Support Center, since support can combine several BMR
numbers in a single library 'explosion' request.

If you wanted to update for example the Order Entry programs to the latest
and greatest,
you could request the latest BMRs be cut for the involved programs (search
on OGS in the BMR Objects section of the BMR search form for the object you
wish to update, and write down a BMR number matching your BPCS release).  Do
this for each program you wish to update (some BMRs may include several
programs).

No matter what the BMR number is that you write down, as long as the BMR was
completed for your
BPCS version and release and contains the program you want to update, an
'explosion' of that BMR  will always give you the latest code changes when
the
'explosion' is built.

That is to say, you don't need to list every BMR number ever done against
the programs you are wanting to update -- for example if you find the
program ORD701B in both BMR 5678 and in BMR6789 and both are showing as
being completed in release 6.1.02, then by ordering EITHER ONE of the BMR
numbers you will get the same version of ORD701B, and the explosion  will in
fact include code changes done for both BMR fixes. That is because the
explosion program only takes the current code for that program, as the
program exists on the day the BMR library is built.

SSA GT does not maintain frozen levels of older copies of code on site for
the purpose of sending out BMRs. We always send the latest fixes available
from R&D on the day that the BMR library is created. This is the same as IBM
does with PTFs (if you order a PTF and it is superseded, they always send
you the newer one). The main difference is in terminology - at SSA GT the
BMR explosion libraries keep the same name as the BMR which was originally
ordered, even if the library ends up including a more recently completed
BMR - therefore our BMR instructions tell you to look inside the library to
see what was built.

So, simply order ANY BMR done at your BPCS release and containing the
programs you want to update, and thus you will get the very latest code
changes for that program or programs.

There is always a QTXTSRC text member which ships with an explosion library
and this explains all the BMR code changes which were included in the
explosion library on the day the explosion was run.

This will give you something similar to a 'BMR Bundle' but you can custom
target your requests towards a specific product or a set of related
programs,
which may also make it easier for you to do internal testing on the set of
BMRs you receive.

Another way to be pro-active about fixes you may require is to review the
online OGS feature of 'Recently Passed BMRs' - this listing will show you
recent
completed changes, and you can review these weekly and decide if you should
order
them for your site.

Searches of BMRs on the OGS site can now also be saved to your PC into comma
delimited formats so that you can download the file to your own spreadsheets
etc. for further analysis and review.

Additionally, under the Product Support OGS section Technical Documents is a
very important one called 'BMR Change Management' which explains what a BMR
really is, and outlines strategies for applying BMRs and testing them on
your systems. It is very important to apply any BMRs in DATE order (date of
completion) rather than in BMR number order, or you will back-level parts of
your code.

For example, you would first apply a BMR bundle if it was cut 4 months ago,
to your system, and you would then apply over that any new BMR libraries
which were
cut by Support Center (for example) 2 days ago - regardless of BMR number.

Since a BMR explosion library is merely a collection of 'current' code based
upon the DAY it is cut (i.e., the BMR number or name of the BMR library is
basically irrelevant), you always want to make sure you have the most
current BMR library applied --  in order of the DATE it was CUT by Support
Center (not the date the BMR number on OGS was marked as completed). Newer
(by cut date) BMR libraries should always be applied to the system over the
older dated libraries, so that new code overwrites older code for any
programs
which are in both BMR libraries.

And of course, always test your BMRs before putting them into a production
environment, especially if you have modifications.

Hope this helps somewhat.

Thanks

Genyphyr Novak
SSA GT
----- Original Message -----
From: "Chick Doe" <Cdoe@barton-instruments.com>
To: <BPCS-L@midrange.com>
Sent: Friday, June 08, 2001 1:25 AM
Subject: Re: BMR bundle (yes/no)?


> funny that this came up. i just spoke to the ssa help line about version
6.1.01 to ask if there were any plans for additional software distributions,
ie V6.1.02. they said that there would be no more cumulative distributions
for version 6.1, but they also said that there was a BMR bundle that was
available, though it is not a supported version release of their software.
so i requested the BMR bundle and will also be going through the testing
process. if anybody has any experience with this BMR bundle, i'd sure like
to hear their comments. and if there are 600+ BMRs in this BMR bundle, don't
you think that's enough to package together as a supported release. we went
through the same thing in version 6.04: cum tapes, followed by BMR bundles,
followed by 'son of BMR bundle",  followed by individual BMR's. i thought
the goal was to have periodic, supported, distributions that included all of
the BMR's so that you didn't have to apply the BMR's individually!
>
> chick doe
> barton instrument systems
>



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