Re: Consultants who have to work on junk equipment

[DAsmussen@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 98-11-17 19:31:09 EST, you write:

> And ALL DUE RESPECT to you consultants that move around and know your stuff 
> and share that information...
>  
>  At another job, I ran into a group a few years back that knew BPCS pretty
well
>  but were basically CLUELESS when it came to the AS/400; but of course they 
> would not admit that but rather took on the "know-it-alls" approach. For
instance 
> "If you guys are running tight on disk space, remove observability from your
>  programs". This during the time that RISC was being announced. I convinced
the
>  powers that be that this was NOT the solution but rather disk HOUSE
CLEANING 
> was and if there was still a problem,  more disk ! Saveda HUGE hassle during
the 
> CISC
>  to RISC upgrade. The other REAL brain-dead deal was "GRTOBJAUT *ALL *ALL, 
> etc." to solve their compile and authority problems rather than figuring out
the 
> REAL reasons. Believe it or not, I LOST this argument. Needless to say, any
of 
> you out there that know your stuff could have a FIELD day with this
system...

OoooouuuuuCH!  While programs on the AS/400 seem to take up more space than
most files, I would _NEVER_ suggest removing observability to save space even
before the advent of RISC.  If you remove observability, you cannot get
variable names _or_ a line number on a program dump.  The authority issue goes
without saying.  Sounds like a consulting group (and I _DO_ use that term
lightly) whose initials are CC and did lovely things like modifying the RPG
code of BPCS rather than using AS/Set because "they didn't know AS/Set".
Lovely until someone re-generates the RPG code from AS/Set...

>  Kudos to you folks that do things right !!

Thankee, sai!

Dean Asmussen
Enterprise Systems Consulting, Inc.
Fuquay-Varina, NC  USA
E-Mail:  DAsmussen@aol.com

"A man can fail many times, but he is not a failure until he begins to blame
somebody else." -- John Burroughs
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