RE: Inventory History -- BPCS-L

Hi Al,

        We are on 6.1.02 in BPCS SYS function we have a Parameters
Generation program. In that there is a program SYS822d that list the last
month end date used. You may want to check this since you have noted that
your parm for ITH purge is correctly set. This should give you the date that
was entered on the INV900 job. Good Luck

Bill Moy 

-----Original Message-----
From: Alister Wm Macintyre [mailto:macwheel99@xxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Monday, August 30, 2004 10:02 PM
To: BPCS_L discussion
Subject: Inventory History

We are on BPCS 405 CD and just got a problem which I am summarizing here.

Hopefully if I am missing some nuance, someone can point me in a good
direction.

I am extremely experienced with BPCS but when something goes wrong that has
never before happened to us, I can be nervous what all needs to be done for
resolution.

This weekend EOM (end of month) went reasonably normal, but Monday it was
discovered that Inventory History is missing from INV300 F21.

Looks like file ITH got trashed.
It now has 150,000 records.
It should have over 1 million.

System Parameters appear normal ... calling for us to keep over a year of
history on line.

I have a backup/400 (SAVE 21) that was run before any 900 jobs in the end
month.

We are not on OSG, but use other tech support that needs boss approval
before they are called, because we pay for support by the call.  I have
asked for that approval in this case, because there are some complications
to be resolved, with which my experience doing so is zero.  I basically feel
like I need some hand holding in places.

My prime suspect is INV900 which I know updates a heck of a lot more than
just the ITH file.
I have not yet made a list of the other files, let alone figure out how I
can tell if anything haywire with them.

Strategically what I think needs to be done:
    * Recover ITH records from the backup eve of EOM, combine them with ITH
posted this month so far, and reconstruct their interlinking with IIM file
so that BPCS operations can continue as if nothing had ever gone wrong;
    * figure out if anything else is corrupted, and deal with that;
    * figure out how this happened, so as to try to prevent it happening in
some other later EOM, such as the very next one;
    * add something to our EOM check list so that if stuff like this goes
wrong again in some future EOM, the EOM person can detect that it happened
when more convenient to deal with it than the current reality;
    * when this crisis is over, provide assurance to AL and management that
everything that needed to get cleaned up was in fact cleaned up.

My tentative plan for recovering our Inventory History:
    * Plan on doing this some weekend like next weekend ... get all the
software and how to figured out in time for that.
    * Everyone off BPCS except folks working on fixing this.
    * Backup/400 safety at very start of the process, in case anything go
wrong in the efforts
    * That takes just under 2 hours
    * Current ITH get copied some place else library for reference to help
in the continuing repair effort.  Al believes this will contain transactions
posted since the EOM and may also contain history on deleted items.
    * This would probably go pretty fast ... a matter of minutes.
    * From Fri nite Aug 27 backup/400 tape, restore the ITH file and ONLY
the ITH file, using 400 option to combine on disk any records from the
backup tape that aint there now
    * I need to review IBM 400 documentation on the particulars of what can
be done and how to do it, because it has been a very long time since I last
used 400 restoration stuff
    * Restore always takes a heck of a lot longer than I think reasonable
... this could be a couple hours just to restore one file.
    * At this point we should have almost all the data we need, but BPCS not
yet able to access it, and if anyone does any BPCS transactions before the
ITH/IIM remapping completed, they could be corrupted.
    * It might be smart to copy the ITH that is on disk from the restore to
some other library for reference to help with the recovery effort.
    * It may be neccessary to run some IBM 400 job to combine the ITH that
was copied before the restore with the ITH that was restored.
    * ITH vs. IIM tracking numbers need resequencing, so that INV300 and
other BPCS can correctly access inventory history, and continued inventory
transactions will be posted correctly
    * Hopefully our tech support has a program to do that, so Al not have to
reinvent that wheel ... it is NOT simple software to write and verify it
working right
    * Al no idea how long this would take to run, possibly a few hours
    * Problem not how long it takes but getting that software correct in a
timely manner
    * We need some way of checking that everything is Ok
    * Backup/400 safety at very end of this process
    * Aggregate time estimate ... if nothing goes haywire along the way
...9 hours or less
    * People may get back on BPCS 400 for normal operations.
I need to review what command functions to use to copy files so as not to
mess up the logicals, pointing wrong places.

-
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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