subject: RE: Question on updating some OLD programs

We like to create history libraries.

You could create a file called SALES in library HIST2012, HIST2011,
HST2010, etc. Then place the data for SALES2012 in HIST2012/SALES,
SALES2011 in HIST2011/SALES.

Change your override in your CL to FILE(SALES) TOFILE(HIST2012/SALES) or
use the EXTFILE in the RPG with a user open.

You have a little more work when you have reports crossing multiple
years but it makes cleanup of old data easy, you just clear or delete
the file in the history library.

Regards,

Scott
-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Victor Hunt
Sent: Thursday, April 05, 2012 2:14 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Question on updating some OLD programs

I do apologize in advance for asking about something most folks dealt
with
years and years ago...

I have a large number of programs in our sales reporting system that
were
written a very long time ago. We are in the beginning stages of
upgrading
them. In most cases, these programs have program defined files. In
almost
all cases, the file name is something like SALES. There isn't a file on
our
system called SALES. There are however files called SALES2012,
SALES2011,
etc. The CL has an OVRDBF command to point SALES to the appropriate
SALESYYYY file for processing. Of course, this is variable as any
SALESYYYY
file going back 10 years can be selected by the user.

As part of the upgrade, we'd like to change all program defined files to
externally defined files. Unfortunately, the file SALES doesn't exist so
compiles would fail. I could change them all to SALES2012, but at some
point this file won't exist either. I can create an empty file named
SALES
with the same layout and no records, but this still has it's problems
(there are many programs where the file is defined more then once,
SALES1
and SALES2, for summary processing).

What is the best way to handle this situation? We are on 7.1 by the way
if
it makes any difference in how we would handle this.