Web Access to IBM books, fails

[trevor.lazarus@ssa.gov]

Is this happening to anyone else? Try this address: <a > href="http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr/BOOKS/QB3AGY03/CCONTENTS"> RPG manual</a> does it return: Internal Server Error .... contact the server administrator, smsinet@us.ibm.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, ... Trevor

[J.Wells]

Yep. I was just about to post the same message!

[Guest.Visitor]

Obviously something's broken - if you go to http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/ and try to get to any books by following the links, you eventually get the same message. Steve

[B.Myrick]

Is it possible that IBM is moving it's documents elswhere? :) Happens quite frequently. IBM has provided this aging programmer with a virtual Easter-egg Hunt every few months. -Bret

[J.Pluta]

It's been down since at least yesterday. I sent email to the address twice so far... no response, no fix. This points out a very important issue: if you decide to put documentation online in order to reduce your support costs, you need to have 24/7 support for the online documentation, otherwise you look VERY unprofessional. Especially if all you get is "Internal Server Error". That little message should have beeped somebody's beeper, and whoever is in charge of online documentation should have had themselves a little weekend project. This is not meant as a jab to the online documentation team, but simply as a statement of fact: if they'd fixed it on the weekend, they'd only have had disrupted the schedules of a few nutcases like me who are willing to say "Oh, it's the weekend, what can you do?", whereas now that it's leaked over to Monday, they're going to have a LOT more exposure. The old saying "a stitch in time saves nine" is very apropos in the online service world. Internal errors for supposedly "automated" systems ought to ring some serious alarm bells. And if you put an email address in your error message, for goshsakes MONITOR that email box. Joe

[B.Myrick]

The weekend is usually the best time for me to browse the documentation. I don't really have time to do it in depth during the workday and my wife and kids rarely give me enough time to do so weeknights. Gotta have the 24/7 support. -Bret p.s. Just wonderin': Does IBM use Domino?

[J.Wells]

They're baaack.......

[J.Pluta]

The weekend is usually the best time for me to browse the documentation. I don't really have time to do it in depth during the workday and my wife and kids rarely give me enough time to do so weeknights. Gotta have the 24/7 support. While I agree, Bret, since my R&D work is usually done off hours and weekends, I still stand by my point that such problems are a lot more visible during the week than during the weekend. The system is back up and running, so unless they've actually been working on it since Sunday morning, it didn't take all that long to fix. In my opinion, for what it's worth, it would have been a nice PR coup to fix the glitch and have things in order by Monday morning. As it is, getting things back up this quickly is appreciated, but I'd have been a bit more enthusiastic in my response had it been done yesterday. Joe

[David Abramowitz]

I get the V4R4 RPG Manual. Dave

[David Abramowitz]

Bret Myrick asked: Does IBM use Domino? TTBOMK the answer is YES. I believe that most of the 400 pages are generated and maintained using DOMINO. Dave

[trevor.lazarus@ssa.gov]

Shall I delete this thread?