Re: Interesting article...

[Douglas Handy <dhandy@xxxxxxxxx>]

Ron,
 
> It would seem to me that if Comair or the software developer knew of the
> limitation (bug), 

I think limitation is much closer to the mark then a bug, given the
scant information available.  The fact it says the limit is 32,000
schedule changes per month strongly suggests a 16-bit integer field
was used (and probably not in RPG <g>) and the real limit was 32,767. 
Given that the application was over 20 years when both disk and memory
were considerably more expensive, a limit of 32767 changes in a month
(averaging over 1000 per day every day) probably seemed reasonable.

Twenty years ago did you use some field sizes you have had to increase
since then?  Did you have any you didn't realize would overflow until
the program had erronous results?

I suspect they had previously never come close to overflowing the
integer.  And they may not have in December either if the trucks
carrying de-icer to the airport had been able to deliver the ir loads
on schedule.  Instead the entire fleet apparently had to sit idle
causing massive schedule changes to keep accumulating rapidly.

Doug