Re: Change Management

Greg,

It's been a long time since I last did a scratch install - I can't remember if it was XA release 1 or DB mod 4. In any event, it was *PUBLIC *EXCLUDE then. Perhaps they changed it after that, although if they did, I personally think it was a bad decision. Did they also drop the use of adoptive authority? That's the only way I can think of that would cause it to break.

Dave Shaw
MAPICS-L moderator

----- Original Message ----- From: "Greg Wenzloff" <GWenzloff@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "MAPICS ERP System Discussion" <mapics-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, July 24, 2008 10:23 AM
Subject: Re: [MAPICS-L] Change Management

Dave - I think you may be wrong about *PUBLIC *EXCLUDE.

At least on an old version...
My MAPICS system is at XA Release 4 and it is all *PUBLIC *CHANGE.
When we started working on SOX we tried changing it to *EXCLUDE.....
MAPICS would not work at all.

Greg

-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Shaw [mailto:daveshaw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Thursday, July 24, 2008 10:10 AM
To: MAPICS ERP System Discussion
Subject: Re: [MAPICS-L] Change Management

Bryan,

My recommendations would be the following:

1) Analyze which specific tasks your staff needs *ALLOBJ for. Create
specific programs (you'll probably only need CLPs) that adopt *ALLOBJ to
do ONLY these functions and secure the programs so that only the
relevant staff members can run them. Document the rules for granting
authorities to the programs and for using them.

2) Analyze why your files have *PUBLIC *CHANGE. MAPICS ships with
*PUBLIC *EXCLUDE, after all, and all MAPICS programs adopt AMAPICS
authority so that they can work with them. If you have programs of your
own that use MAPICS files, why not use the same scheme? Be sure to
document whatever you do.

3) If you have files that users need *READ access to (for queries or
other things where adoptive authority is difficult to use), consider
using authorization lists for them. Yes, there's a (very small)
performance impact at file open, but it's negligible for any
decently-sized modern system. Use the same authorization list for each
file group and maintaining access takes very little work. Make sure you
document whatever you do.

Third-party tools can make managing access easier. In addition to
security tools, you might also want to consider change management tools
like TurnOver or Implementer. My suggestion, though, is to decide how
you want to manage your system first, and then look at tools to support
that. Systems that are well-thought-out and capable of being managed
manually are much easier to automate with tools.

Ultimately, though, if you want to satisfy SOx auditors, documentation
is everything. Well defined, well documented, sensible processes will
almost always pass audit; poorly documented practices based on
expediency will not.

Good luck with whatever you do!

Dave Shaw
MAPICS-L moderator