RE: SAVCHGOBJ (was APYJRNCHG)

[Jim Damato <jdamato@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>Al says-

>IMHO, the guys at IBM that figured out multi-membered files were having an
>off day.  Furthermore, the users that relied on such a thing were
>snuckedered down the primrose path.

True.  Multi-membering just doesn't scale.  The object locking and
contention issues are brutal as these applications take on more data, users,
and job streams.  Before we moved to a 740 12-way I thought I had seen every
stinkin' ADDPFM, ADDLFM, RMVM error there was to see.  A whole bunch of new
problems cropped up on the new server -- things that seemed to suggest that
the server was faster than the member handling code.  Finding that we
couldn't perform incremental backups was the icing on the cake.


>With the exception of manufacturing packages, the multi-membering of data
>files really never took off...

I've seen it used extensively in Island Pacific (retail/merchandising
package) and Lawson (Financials - pseudo ERP package).


>The remainder of the System/38-AS/400-iSeries architecture never recognized
>it's existence, and in logical form, SAVCHGOBJ was not a good solution for
>a multi-membered environment.

I think it's one of those techniques that seems really cool when you're
designing and coding it, but really sucks when you're supporting it.

-Jim

James Damato
Manager - Technical Administration
Dollar General Corporation
<mailto:jdamato@dollargeneral.com>