RE: What will service pack 3 (SP3) fix and when?

Thank you again Violaine.  I looked at the website and it is more than I
was hoping for as far as information on problem fixes.  It will save me
lots of time.  I totally agree with Chris Proctor's response below.  As I
recall, awhile ago, tech support contacted Violaine with one of my crazy
problems and Violaine solved it right away.  I kept this in mind while I
was posting the SP3 question.  Keeping this in mind, please be assured I
mean no criticism of IBM.  They have responded in a timely manner and
usually ended up resolving my problems.  Sometimes more than one person
works on my problem and they all seem intelligent and harworking.  The bulk
of my frustration (and time spent) is in recreating my problem.  I think
recreating a problem is important though in order to better match my
problem against a known problem that has already been resolved.  I also
agree with Violaine that recreating problems is important to know how to
solve the problem.  If I (or tech support) could take my problem initially
without knowing how to recreate it and match against known problems that
are possibly the same, that would help tremendously.  Then go about
recreating the problem.  I think the website will do just that as long as
people USE it.  I was hoping there would be a wesite with a compilation of
people's problems that have been resolved and the website does that and
more.  I think that if more people use the website, customers, tech
support, and possibly developers would be able to focus more on NEW
problems.  It might even cut down on the number of e-mails posted to
midrange.com.
Check the website out two emails down everyone.

** From Chris Proctor **
This message is in MIME format. Since your mail reader does not understand
this format, some or all of this message may not be legible.
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Well, Violaine, I for one, have been very impressed (and appreciative) of
all the help you and the rest of IBM have been giving with problems and
questions regarding the product.  Being an ol' IBM customers it's nice to
see that IBM has FINALLY started to realize that customer support is
crucial
to IBMs well being. Thank you!

Chris Proctor
Manager of Systems Integration
Gart Sports
Denver

-----Original Message-----
From: batthish@ca.ibm.com [mailto:batthish@ca.ibm.com]
Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2001 11:50 AM
To: code400-l@midrange.com
Subject: Re: What will service pack 3 (SP3) fix and when?


Craig,

Tech support in Rochester mostly doesn't know this information because I
don't tell them!  Often the final list of fixes is not determined until the
last minute.
Tech support in Rochester contacts me when they have a question or when
someone reports a problem that they need assistance with.
They try constantly to get me to give them a date for service packs, and
like any developer with any sense, I always give a vague answer :-)
My team places focus on those issues/problem, PRIOR to the mailing list or
newsgroup, which is why sometimes you will see a delay in responding to the
mailing list, or newsgroup (ie, usually when calls from Rochester come in
we drop what we're working on to take care of those problems)

As for known problems, that is an interesting point.  In the last 4 months,
I have made an effort to log any problem REPORTED BY A CUSTOMER in an APAR,
and I have tried to make sure the APAR is visible on the web within a week,
this way the Rochester team is also aware of problems customers may be
reporting to us.   You can see these APARs at this link (look for 5722WDS61
as the product ID for V5R1M0):
http://as400service.ibm.com/supporthome.nsf/document/10000035
I have tried to get the V4R5M1 version listed here (but with no success so
far).
In the case of the problem you mention (CURLIB & STRCODE), there is no APAR
(yet), since this was a problem I noticed while working on some other bug
and just whipped up the fix for it while I was at it.  Now that you've
mentioned it :-),  I will be sure to open the APAR and document when the
fix will be available and the workaround I provided you with.

I would just like to say that I really appreciate when problems are
reported via Rochester support, because they do a great job of reproducing
the problem and providing me with a set of concise steps, which allows me
to develop a fix for a bug much more quickly than otherwise.  I have worked
closely with that team on the CODE product for over 2 years now, and I know
they are hard working intelligent folks.

Please keep reporting any bugs you find, through support (for the best
service) or through the mailing list and newsgroup, and have some patience
with us.
We are trying hard to improve our support for CODE and any suggestions you
would like to make for the product, we are also logging those as well.

Thanks,
Violaine Batthish
CODE Project Lead
batthish@ca.ibm.com          IBMCA(BATTHISH)

WDT/400 page:  http://www.ibm.com/software/ad/wdt400
WDT/400 Support : http://www.ibm.com/software/ad/wdt400/support




                    craigs@dekko.com
                    Sent by:                 To:     code400-l@midrange.com
                    code400-l-admin@mi       cc:
                    drange.com               Subject:     What will service
pack 3 (SP3) fix and when?


                    09/26/2001 01:12
                    PM
                    Please respond to
                    code400-l





What will service pack 3 (SP3) fix and when?
Why can't the tech support in Rochester AT LEAST know this apparently
confidential information that the developers know?

I posted to the code400-l@midrange.com mailing list for the first time this
week and I have gotten answers much quicker than the IBM tech support has
given me for most of the problems I report.  I have also seen posts of my
same problems on the mailing list archives.  Rob Berendt is right, I need
to post to midrange.com more often.

Thank you everyone (including Violaine Batthish) for the analysis to come
up with the information on my problem being resolved in SP3.  I wish I
could have gotten Violaine's answer from the IBM tech support I was in
contact with.  I told the tech support Violaine's answer.  It appears that
most of the problems I reported to IBM are already known and will be
resolved in SP3.  It would be extremely helpful to know the current
problems SP3 will fix and would save me hours of analysis.  Does anyone
know if that information is available?  I usually call IBM with a problem
and there is time spent trying to have them duplicate my problem.  Most of
the time they cannot duplicate it but after a couple days they say that my
problem is known and will be fixed in SP3.

Thanks,
Craig Strong

From: batthish@ca.ibm.com
Subject: RE: Stop prompting for current library twice
To: code400-l@midrange.com
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2001 11:02:39 -0400
Reply-To: code400-l@midrange.com

Hi Craig,

This is a known problem, and the fix will be available in V5R1M0 SP3  and
V4R5M1 SP3.

I believe in order to circumvent the problem, you can try to go to the
library list page in your Communication Properties window and ensure that
the current library specified for the server (probably OS400 in this case)
is not blank, but rather *USRPRF.

Thanks,

Violaine Batthish
CODE Project Lead
batthish@ca.ibm.com          IBMCA(BATTHISH)

WDT/400 page:  http://www.ibm.com/software/ad/wdt400
WDT/400 Support : http://www.ibm.com/software/ad/wdt400/support



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