Re: Adding columns to existing Infor files.

I got retired when my day job switched to a different ERP than BPCS, on a
different platform than IBM.
I was with the company long enough to go thru multiple versions of BPCS on
S/36 then on AS/400.
We learned that SSA would say one thing about future versions, then do
something entirely different.
Over time we had multiple learning experiences what not to do, thanks to
various upgrade surprises.
I will try to put separate "thoughts" into different installments to address
different issues we had, which might be relevant to you, such as:
* File design chaos;
* Deadline to fix something, which a later BPCS upgrade fixes,
differently.
* Internal change politics;
* Reversing a m=bombed upgrade;
* Exceptions to BPCS standards;
* Messages;

In the beginning, many files had some blank space at the end, where SSA told
us that in future versions, the record length would remain the same, and
they might be adding new fields immediately after the existing fields. We
believed this story, and started adding our own fields starting at the far
end of the file, the final positions of the file, and working back, so
there was always a gap between alleged growth space, and our insertions.

Big surprise when a new version came out, which altered record length and
provided new fields which overlapped the ones we had inserted.

Alister Wm Macintyre (Al Mac)

Wow-way was down a week, end Sept - early Oct, so I am way behind responding
to communications. Initially they were slow to repair an "outage in my
area," then determined signal is lost between Wow & my Wow Modem.

I ordered checks, with my PO Box instead of my street address. In the
process, ONB mis-spelled my surname.