RE: RE: 5.1.2.5 vs 6.0 co-existence and 5.2.1.5 removal

Okee dokee.  While I am not trivializing the lack of backward
compatibility here, I would like to point out that the situation was a
pretty tough act to follow.

1. You found an iSeries command that gave you the results you needed to
send a file to a rigidly designed third party program.

2. IBM changed the command so that it no longer matched the third party
program.

3. There existed at least two solutions to work around the change in the
command (use a VARCHAR, or trim the file after generating it).

4. Another command existed that gave you the desired results.

All in all I'm thinking the iSeries did pretty well despite the lack of
backward compatibility.

Personally, I'd still have liked to see an option that would allow the
command to work like it used to; the lack thereof is to my mind a rather
serious flaw in IBM's decision-making process. 

Joe


> From: Gerald Kern
> 
> Problem was this file is sent to MS 2K server where a thrid party app
> (biztalk or some custom code - I'm not sure what it is) picks it up
and
> processes it and sends it to our electronic medical records app. For
some
> reason the extra blanks caused that app to think there was 'unknown'
data
> in
> the file and it was generating an error report. Unfortunately this
(EMR)
> is
> a third party product not under my direct control and I don't want to
pay
> to have the application changed to eliminate a benign 'problem'.