The following stories are true. I’m telling you this up front because it’s hard to imagine that they could actually happen.
A couple of winters ago, we were hit by a pretty heavy snowstorm where I live. It made driving very difficult and walking almost impossible. My brother-in-law, however, didn’t think that 2 inches of ice should keep him from his morning cup of coffee at the restaurant with the boys, so out he went at 5:00 in the morning. He no more than stepped out of his truck in the parking lot when he slipped and fell, breaking his leg in the process. Since it was still dark outside, no one discovered him for quite a while. By the time the paramedics arrived, he’d lain there so long that his pants had frozen to the ground. On the way to the hospital, the paramedics noticed an awful lot of smoke coming into the cabin of the ambulance. They stopped, got my brother-in-law out, and watched as the ambulance became engulfed in billowing clouds of smoke! I have a mental image of this poor guy strapped to a gurney, alongside the interstate, in knee-deep snow, and his only hope of getting some relief for his broken leg quickly turning into a smoldering ruin. Now that’s a great example of how things can go from bad to worse!
A Slip of the Finger
In our AS/400 world, things can go south just as quickly. Recently, on the Midrange Computing Discussion Forums (www.midrangecomputing.com/forums), someone posted a plea for help. It seems that this fellow had just taken a position in an AS/400 shop and was attempting to use Select Command (SLTCMD) to prompt for all commands beginning with CVT*. We’re not sure what happened next. Was it a ringing telephone that distracted him? Was it a coworker popping in to ask a question? Or was it just a momentary lapse of concentration? Whatever it was, because of a slight misplacement of a finger on the keyboard, SLTCMD CVT* became DLTCMD CVT*. In the space of a moment, all of the AS/400 commands beginning with the letters CVT, such as Convert Date (CVTDAT), were gone. That was bad. Things got worse when he went to look for the latest recovery tape and discovered that a system backup hadn’t been run since the AS/400 was installed. At that point, this guy must have felt a terrible sinking in his gut. What a horrible experience! Unfortunately, he’s not alone.
Details, Details...
When I was just starting out as a programmer, I worked for a trucking company. One of my first projects was implementing canned software that allowed clerks to record driver logs. To provide some file-maintenance-cleanup functionality to this package, I wrote a program that would save a range of logbook data to tape and then clear those records from the database. You can guess what happened. I tested the software on a Friday afternoon, and it worked so well that I put it into production and scheduled it to run that very night. I figured we’d be safe if any problems came up, since we also ran a backup on Friday nights. This fact might have saved me if I’d scheduled my job to run after the backup rather than before.
I came in the next day to see how it went. Upon displaying the logbook file, I found that about 250,000 records had been removed. I wasn’t extremely familiar with the database and how big it should be, so this sounded about right to me. Ha! I then displayed the tape and discovered that the file saved on it was extremely small. At that point, I began to worry. I looked at my program and realized that my hardcoded library names were wrong. I had forgotten to change the test library name for the save. After performing a flawless save of the test file, my program, doing what I had told it to do, deleted a quarter of a million records from the production file. Aargh! That was bad. Things got worse on the following Monday, when I had to face five data-entry clerks and tell them that they were in for some major rekeying. That was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.
The Moral of the Story
So what’s the moral of these stories? The moral is that paying attention to detail and always being prepared should be the highest priorities in your shop. Accidents and mistakes can happen at any time, but, with proper precautions and good backups, their effects can be minimized. If I’d taken a little more time double-checking my code, I would have seen that I’d hardcoded a test library on the Save command and averted a very embarrassing situation. If the fellow who deleted all the CVT* commands had been paying closer attention while typing and if he hadn’t signed on as the security officer while doing it, his story might have had a happier ending, too. And if my brother-in-law had just stayed home to drink his coffee, he wouldn’t have found himself stranded on a snow-covered interstate with a broken leg. Stop and think before making an irreversible move in your shop. Otherwise, you may find yourself telling the story of how your situation went from bad to worse!
By the way, (just so I don't leave you hanging on all these events), I was able to recover all but one week's worth of data that I'd lost from a previous backup tape, so the clerks didn't lynch me. The fellow who deleted all the CVT* commands received a lot of great advice on the MC Forums and ended up restoring the missing CVT* commands from a save file that one of the Forum members sent him. And my brother-in-law? Well, he walks with a limp now but still meets the boys for coffee every morning before the sun comes up. Some folks will never learn!
More than ever, there is a demand for IT to deliver innovation. Your IBM i has been an essential part of your business operations for years. However, your organization may struggle to maintain the current system and implement new projects. The thousands of customers we've worked with and surveyed state that expectations regarding the digital footprint and vision of the company are not aligned with the current IT environment.
TRY the one package that solves all your document design and printing challenges on all your platforms. Produce bar code labels, electronic forms, ad hoc reports, and RFID tags – without programming! MarkMagic is the only document design and print solution that combines report writing, WYSIWYG label and forms design, and conditional printing in one integrated product. Make sure your data survives when catastrophe hits. Request your trial now! Request Now.
Forms of ransomware has been around for over 30 years, and with more and more organizations suffering attacks each year, it continues to endure. What has made ransomware such a durable threat and what is the best way to combat it? In order to prevent ransomware, organizations must first understand how it works.
Disaster protection is vital to every business. Yet, it often consists of patched together procedures that are prone to error. From automatic backups to data encryption to media management, Robot automates the routine (yet often complex) tasks of iSeries backup and recovery, saving you time and money and making the process safer and more reliable. Automate your backups with the Robot Backup and Recovery Solution. Key features include:
Business users want new applications now. Market and regulatory pressures require faster application updates and delivery into production. Your IBM i developers may be approaching retirement, and you see no sure way to fill their positions with experienced developers. In addition, you may be caught between maintaining your existing applications and the uncertainty of moving to something new.
IT managers hoping to find new IBM i talent are discovering that the pool of experienced RPG programmers and operators or administrators with intimate knowledge of the operating system and the applications that run on it is small. This begs the question: How will you manage the platform that supports such a big part of your business? This guide offers strategies and software suggestions to help you plan IT staffing and resources and smooth the transition after your AS/400 talent retires. Read on to learn:
LATEST COMMENTS
MC Press Online