Linking problem in 7.10G

[alex ling]

Thanks for your support, Arthur.

Yeah, my client runs a financial application (dealing bullion, forex,
derivatives, etc) developed in-house over the last 10 years in
PowerHouse/Interbase (that's how trust they had then in Cognos).
Needless to say, the application is complicated and the end-of-day
batch process involves several hundreds QTP programs crunching big
heavy dollar value in the order of millions. It is crucial for us to
get it right and that Cognos software does not fail - in our case no
change to a line of code, recompile on 710G from 710E4, run and just
BOOOM!! This error is data dependent (that's scarely) and pops up only
AT RUNTIME!! It was lucky for us that our test data was good enough. 

Being a merchant bank unfortunately with an US bank as parent, we are
under pressure from the OCC (US banks watchdog) to upgarde to Y2K
compliant status by end of October 1998. Time is more precise than our
bullion holding now. If OCC is not happy, the shareholders might cry.

Regards,
A Ling.


---arthur kogan <akogan@westpac.com.au> wrote:
>
> Hi Bob,
> 
> I had a conversation with Alex Ling exactly about this issue couple
of days ago
> and we came up with exactly the same explanation. I have seen this
problem
> before (while I was working for Cognos support in Sydney), but in my
case it was
> linking a char*10 field to a char*8 field. If the value in the
char*10 field was
> 9 or 10 characters long, you got a data conversion error.
> 
> I agree that this is a BAD programing technique, however in Alex's
case (and
> probably a lot of other people's) he is working on an old system and
it would
> take a big effort to make appropriate changes. The change requires
not just the
> database changes and recompilation. Think of all the temps and
defines that need
> to be changed. Also you may have a problem of space in screen and
report layouts
> if you have used the default pictures, as the short takes less space
than long.
> It could require a great deal of work to fix.
> 
> I therefore suggest that Cognos (rather than rejecting this "bug"),
handle it in
> a more user friendly way as follows. At compile time flag an
appropriate
> warning. At run time, do a pre-check on the value before trying to
link, and in
> case the value is to big, again flag a warning, not an error!!! That
is, this
> should be handled as "no match found" (which is the actual
situation, since it
> is impossible for a match to exist), but not an error stopping the
program
> running.
> 
> This way you are truly putting the user in control.
> 
> How about it?
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Arthur Kogan
> Westpac Financial Services
> Sydney, Australia
> 
> Deskin, Bob wrote:
> 
> > I just heard from Allison about the linking problem in 7.10G and I
thought
> > everyone would be interested. The bug # is 245681 and has to do
with getting
> > a data conversion error linking an InterBase long binary to an
InterBase
> > short binary. Turns out that the error existed at least as far
back as
> > 7.10E4 (and probably further back) but it was ignored rather than
being
> > reported. During the development of the QTP Tracer (which is
Allison's baby
> > and accomplishment - everyone say thank you to Allison), the code
was
> > changed to report the error so it could be traced. Now the
clincher. The
> > error only occurs when a value that is too large for the short
binary is
> > used. In other words, this is a valid error message. This bug is
being
> > rejected.
> >
> > Bob Deskin
> > Senior Product Advisor  bob.deskin@cognos.com
> > Cognos Inc.             (613) 738-1338 ext 4205 FAX: (613) 228-3149
> > 3755 Riverside Drive P.O. Box 9707 Stn. T, Ottawa ON K1G 4K9 CANADA
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