Interesting message queue behavior

[Jeff Crosby <jlcrosby@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I ran across some interesting message behavior yesterday.  First a bit 
of background so you know where I'm at.

The salespeople transmit orders from their laptops into the iSeries.  I 
have 2 message queues defined, ACCESS and ORDERS.  ACCESS contains a 
number of messages from each transmission: The fact it started, who it 
is, what they're sending in, when it finished, etc.  The purpose of 
ACCESS is if there is a problem, I can see a lot of detail as to what 
went on.  ORDERS contains 1 message per order transmitted.  The purpose 
of ORDERS is for the system operator to easily check who has 
trannsmitted today and who hasn't.

Yesterday about 4pm the system operator came in and said she had a 
problem.  ORDERS was completely empty.  I looked at it and it was.  I 
immediately thought someone (probably her) had hit F13 while viewing it. 
 Checked authority and *PUBLIC can only add messages and view it. 
Hmmm.  Checked the auditing journal and found nothing.  Then I looked at 
ACCESS message queue.  Only the 'Transmission finished' messages were 
there with a number of blank lines in between!

To make a long story short, I have a message member I created years ago 
with all my error messages, info messages, etc.  I put in a USR9897 and 
USR9898 which are essentially clones of CPF9897 and CPF9898, i.e., the 
first level message is "&1" and "&1." respectively.  I used USR9897 to 
send these messages.

I had been looking at USR9897 with a utility, WMF, that I downloaded 
from somewhere.  WMF evidently has a bug to where it removes the &1 so 
the message after that was ' '.  When I put the &1 back in, all the 
message reappeared!  I learned something new.  Messages in message 
queues are evidently just links back to the message member.  If you 
change a message in a message member, all occurrences of that message in 
message queues are immediately changed.  Even if they were sent hours 
before.  I never knew that.

And now everybody will chime in and say they already knew that, where 
have you been? <g>

--
Jeff Crosby
Dilgard Frozen Foods, Inc.
P.O. Box 13369
Ft. Wayne, IN 46868-3369
260-422-7531

The opinions expressed are my own and not necessarily
the opinion of my company.  Unless I say so.