Re: FW: BPCS -- BPCS-L

Al is right of course - if you have managers! I always remember working with
MAAPICS in the early eighties (heavily modified), and whenever you hit a
system problem you would get the message 'See your supervisor' - what
Supervisor? I am the 'supervisor'! I guess UK companies are a bit less
hierarchical than that!!

And when I was at SSA, at some point (v4-V6?) they actually changed all the
function keys. That would have been the time to make the 'Run interactively'
function key optional, and settable in the system parms. Unfortunately it
wasn't done.

Database tuning is important for BPCS V6 and up. If a 'batch' job is
accessing a file and reading many records through SQL, the system will
create a throw away index on the fly, and this takes a lot of resource. You
don't want this happening iteratively at all, and especially not in the
Interactive pool.

Yes, CMF (Cost Master file) gets HUGE doesn't it? And it is accessed very
frequently in some crucial programs like ORD701b, so it can quickly become a
performance hog. Likewise ITH, which also sometimes goes out of sequence.
RAR is another hog, with many logicals over it. In fact there's a lot of
dead wood on most BPCS systems that slows things down. The solution for that
of course is the BPCS Archiving software, which is sold as 'Locksmith' in
the US by Unbeaten Path.

cheers,

Clare

Clare Holtham
Director, Small Blue Ltd - Archiving for BPCS
Web: www.smallblue.co.uk
IBM Certified iSeries Systems Professional
Email: Clare.Holtham@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Alister Wm Macintyre" <macwheel99@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "SSA's BPCS ERP System" <bpcs-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, January 26, 2005 11:26 PM
Subject: Re: [BPCS-L] FW: BPCS


> Not USER training but MANAGER training.
> Any time the system is sluggish because some user job hogging the system
> running interactive that logically belongs in batch, and can in fact be
run
> in batch.
>
> Notify the user responsible, and the MANAGER of that user, and then tell
> the OTHER users that the person responsible works in so & so's
> department.  Pretty soon, the manager of so & so department will see to it
> that the people in that department get the proper training, or else
> management collectively will inform you that this is not something that
> bothers them any more.
>
> In my experience, not all batch jobs run interactive are a problem.
> Certain programs are a problem.
>     * A poorly written query that joins ITH (2 million records) with CMF
> (1/2 million records) with something else, that if run on JOBQ will be
done
> in 5 minutes, but someone is running it interactive, and after 20 minutes
> everyone is asking why the 400 is locked up
>     * Our system can only support a limited number of heavy batch jobs
> running on different JOBQ at same time, so we make modifications to push
> certain heavy duty tasks onto their own JOBQ
>     * Certain programs I have modified so that no one can run them
> interactive ... it was simpler to get the modification done than argue
with
> everyone
> Modification / Training to resolve those programs
>
> When the system gets clogged thanks to very high demand on interactive,
> there is a message that goes to DSPLOG ... I wrote a CL to capture hits by
> that message, security violations, files filling up, and other events of
> greatest interest, which I look at every few days ... so I know when it
> happening, how often, related circumstances, do we need to do something
> about it
>
> I don't want to have to change one program at a time either
> I was contemplating reading source code into a program that would look for
> certain patterns and make certain substitutions that would include
comments
> what got done
> This to fix some systemic bugs in BPCS RPG
> not a project I am enthusiastic about tackling
>
> >We are mixed mode version 6.04 (apr cum) heavily modified.
> >
> >Is there a global parameter to stop users from submitting interactive
jobs?
> >
> >
> >Question is from a manager here:
> > > I would like to prevent users from running jobs interactively. Is
there
> > a BPCS system setting that can be set to only allow users to run jobs in
> > batch or is there a way to mass update BPCS programs to only allow the
> > run in batch option?  I don't want to have to change one program at a
time.
> > >
> >Thanks!
> >
> >--
> >  please take a moment to review the archives
> >at http://archive.midrange.com/bpcs-l.
>
> -
> Al Macintyre  http://www.ryze.com/go/Al9Mac
> Find BPCS Documentation Suppliers
> http://radio.weblogs.com/0107846/stories/2002/11/08/bpcsDocSources.html
>
> -- 
> This is the SSA's BPCS ERP System (BPCS-L) mailing list
> To post a message email: BPCS-L@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or change list options,
> visit: http://lists.midrange.com/mailman/listinfo/bpcs-l
> or email: BPCS-L-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> Before posting, please take a moment to review the archives
> at http://archive.midrange.com/bpcs-l.
>
> Delivered-To: Clare.Holtham@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>