Re: BPCS migration from 2.0 to 6.0.04 -- BPCS-L

Hi Alister, 

I have to take exception with your reply here. Your comments are based on
a conversion program from when you converted BPCS, which as I recall is
back when I was on Support, and that was at least 5 years ago. The
BPCS 
conversion tool has been re-written many times since then and is used by
most companies who upgrade BPCS these days. The process is much faster and
 improved in mnay ways (including dozens of BMRs) since the days of yore.
Please do not think that your experience from that long ago still applies
to the conversion utility of today (by the way there is just 1 utility
which goes from 2.0.09 - V8.2.00 allowing you to stop at any point in the
middle) as it certainly does not. The biggest problems clients face when
upgrading versions are in 
moving their own modifications forward from release to release - and this 
is always made easier if the BPCS files are left 'as is' and new files
are used for any modifications or extensions of existing BPCS files. Many
customers therefore request help from SSA Professional Services to help in
the upgrade of a customized database. If your BPCS files are 'vanilla'
then the current conversion utility does a very good job. 

My big question here is - if someone has 'purchased' 6.0.04 BPCS, then
they should also have a support contract, and should be able to receive
the conversion utility from SSA GT directly. Most people these days
would not choose to upgrade to 6.0.04 but would head instead for a newer
release such as 6.1.02 or the V8.2 release. I question why a person who
has legally purchased the BPCS 6.0.04 software would be needing to write
to a user
forum to request that another cusotmer who has purchased our
product at cost to themselves should then illegally
copy our upgrade utility and send it to them, rather than opening a
support center call
to request the one that is normally sent by SSA with the purchased
product and which has full support center backing. If this is indeed a
legal purchase of 6.0.04 then please do phone the SSA Support center and
request the conversion utility from SSA GT. Do note that the BPCS utility
covers 2.0.09 - 6.0.04 - to go from version 2.0 you will need to request
the Net Change notes from each of the intermediate 2.x releases and
perform any of the first part of the conversion 'in house' or with a
services contract.

Thanks, 

Genyphyr Novak
SSA GT R&D

On Wed, 14 Jul 2004, Alister Wm Macintyre wrote:

> There's a conversion tool available from SSA GT.
> It may have been fixed since we used it several years ago.
> It was full of bugs.
> 
> You may know that BPCS has a few bugs and BMRS to deal with them due to 
> thousands of different companies using BPCS and bombarding SSA with 
> grievances about them, but not so many companies use their conversion tool, 
> so not so many complaints about the bugs there, so not so many BMRs to fix 
> the conversion tool.
> 
> The nature of our conversion needs were such that we had to abandon the 
> official tool and go with outside packages costing total of about $ 3,000.00.
> 
> You also need to be careful about disk space.
> We estimated our needs based on original stuff, new data base, and pilot 
> data base.
> What we did not realize is all the intermediate steps ended up having more 
> copies BPCS in intermediate stages, eating a lot more disk space than we 
> budgeted for.
> 
> In any case, there is serious documentation from SSA regarding doing the 
> conversion, that you need to get and study.  It will take many months and 
> many people, and probably call for outside consulting help.
> 
> , you wrote:
> >Dear BPCS User,
> >
> >            We want to convert our BPCS 2.0 files database to BPCS 6.0.04
> >files database .
> >            Please sent my, if exist free utility from this conversion.
> >             Many thanks in advance.
> >
> >           With best regards
> >
> >           Teodor Tundre
> >
> 
> -
> Al Macintyre  http://www.ryze.com/go/Al9Mac
> Find BPCS Documentation Suppliers 
> http://radio.weblogs.com/0107846/stories/2002/11/08/bpcsDocSources.html
> BPCS/400 Computer Janitor at http://www.globalwiretechnologies.com/ 
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