Re: Where's the JBA documentation that... -- SYSTEM21



Dan,

The soapbox you were on (see below) has a lot of footprints on it, and many
shoes bigger than I could fill, but however, the soapbox is not tall enough to
get much attention from the JBA crowd in more lofty circles, although the lack
of height may be beneficial to those wanting to jump off something.

(sorry for the run on sentence with mixed metaphors : ).

JBA Chicago had published a technical standards manual which was intended for
internal use with the hopes of having a wider acceptance (ie: JBA all over) and
to be provided (perhaps only under duress) to customers as well (probably under
oath not to disclose it to ((undesirable)) third party JBA technology (but
non-partner) providers.  It has not made it out of the starting gates, IMHO
because of the reluctance of JBA-UK and other authorised (note the s)
development people to let anything slip out of their control, including their
own brethren JBA-US technical folks.  After all, they only work there.

That type of documentation (which any survivor of JBA ((or of any other like))
implementations have squirreled away for years) does not provide business rules
or value's of significant fields or files.  It mostly gives an idea of the
programming and naming conventions, standards, location of objects, hints for
using copy source stuff, etc.  Good stuff to have when (hopefully with
trepidation) considering or working with source, vanilla or otherwise.  It has
helped me with hundreds of modified objects.

If there is a specific area that you have interest in, or are desperate about,
I'm sure there are some technically strong but so far silent types that may
speak up to help, as well as the vocal types that already help tremendously
through this forum.

I appreciate the cyborg comment, (see between the ** lines ** there does seem to
be some futility involved after spending some time in the JBA environment (for
me, only 9 years so far) and failing to see a difference in some areas.

* * I had to chuckle at your comment:  >>There is no purpose in "fighting" it or
complaining, it just is and probably won't change.<<  It sounds like the battle
cry of the Star Trek borgs, "Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated."
<<  * *

One could have few greater aspirations (once purchased) than that of (even with
resistance) having the only result of an encounter with JBA being an
assimilation of their business model into JBA S/21.

Randy Smith
OMRON Electronics, Inc.


Well, Doug, my original message was really a last ditch effort.  Everybody I've
talked to at JBA says there is no such documentation.  A former JBA employee we
had in here for a few months as a consultant said he'd never seen it.  I just
couldn't seem to grasp that it could possibly be true.  Somewhere in this world,
deep in the bowels of some JBA vault, there must be some technical
documentation.  How can anyone, with a modicum of confidence, maintain this
mountain of code without it?

IS IT JUST ME?!?!?  Isn't it ludicrous that we have to guess what different
status values mean and what combinations of different status fields translate
to?  Are we supposed to scan through JBA's antique source code (in all 100+
libraries) and interpret all the usages of the status field(s) we're supposed to
use?

What do other JBA programmers do?  Do you call the JBA help desk everytime you
need to have this type of information?  (Call, leave a message, get a call back
the next day?  This gets old real quick.)  Or do you wing it, hoping to God that
you've guessed correctly?

How much did we pay for this???  And we can't get _ANY_ technical
documentation??????

(Still steamed, but stepping off my soapbox for now.)



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