Y2K v.s. CHGJOB Gotcha?

["Tim Armstrong" <tma@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

e-mail from Al Macintyre at Tim PC at work

 

Aug 1999 News/400 arrived today & page 113 describes some down sides to using CHGJOB (Change Job) to set JOBDATE to a test date for Y2K testing, that raise some disturbing questions.

 

We did all our BPCS 405 CD Y2K testing on our AS/436 in 1998 by having users change job date to various dates in 2000, beyond, cusp of 99-00, then run test scripts & check for various criteria.  Are there any flaws in that general testing strategy?

 

We found Y2K problems & other bugs which we reported to SSA.  We thoroughly documented them & used dates in which the month-day-year were all different numbers so it was obvious where SSA's code broke down, such as in ORD570.  We trusted that SSA would make a sincere effort to fix Y2K problems in time, since they were being reported with at least 18 months advance warning before the deadline, and we soon learned that when SSA solves a problem they do not make a good faith notification to the customer that reported it, rather it is stuck some place on OSG for us to stumble over.

 

(a) If BPCS has any code that gets its date from RTVSYSVAL (Retrieve System Value), that code does not get tested using the CHGJOB date substitution in JOBDATE.  Does BPCS in fact get dates from RTSYSVAL or any equivalent methodology?  If not, then the only place I need to check are the modifications added by myself & our consultants.

 

(b) JOBDATE does not function exactly as the system date does ... any job that runs past midnite has clock roll over but not date.  I do not believe that is a problem for us, since our testing was conducted during regular business hours.

 

When I have needed a date in modifications, I have either grabbed a copy of whatever BPCS had, or used IBM *DATE to satisfy programming needs of the moment with a hopefully not misplaced blind faith that while SSA might occasionally let us down, IBM has a higher standard of excellence, although they use the same principle as SSA OSG when it comes to us finding out which of our peripherals have Y2K compliant electronics.

 

Bottom line, was CHGJOB an adequate testing strategy for Y2K compliance on BPCS 450 CD?

 

Al Macintyre

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Central Industries of Indiana, Inc.
www.cen-elec.com