Recompiling quiz programs

[Pickering, John (NORBORD)]

I've seen this sort of problem when a bunch of source files are compiled all
at once. Often programmers are lazy and don't start each source with 'set
default' so some characteristic of the previous program is inherited by the
next one. Things like 'set report name' and 'set subfile' come to mind.

And I can't document it at this point but I truly believe that some of the
earlier versions of Quiz were less strict about inheritance from one source
to the next when compiling a gang of programs in one execution of Quiz.

At one time Qtp had a problem with lots of source if you didn't include a
'cancel clear' from time to time too.

My solution -- I built a compile job a long time ago which executes a fresh
Quiz (or Qtp) for each source file. It beats the crap out of the machine
when it executes but that is typically after hours and in batch. Now I don't
care what sloppy code is in the source file because it can damage only the
one program. But if someone leaves a 'go' in the source then I make them eat
the output and they never do it again :-)

And having such compile jobs ready to go makes database changes trivial.
Change the dictionary, change the base, run the compile jobs - all done in
half an hour :-)

John Pickering
Toronto

-----Original Message-----
From: Jackie Detrich
To: powerh-L@lists.swau.edu
Sent: 03/23/2000 12:18 PM
Subject: Recompiling quiz programs

Hi all!  Over the past year I recall seeing something on the list
regarding compiled quiz programs 'losing' their characteristics.  Every
once in awhile, we run into a situation where we've compiled quiz code
and then executed the object.  The program seems to run successfully,
but does not select any records.  Once it has been determined that there
is truly data that should be extracted, we've recompiled and it works
correctly.

It doesn't happen all the time so it is very hard to duplicate the
problem.  We've called Cognos, but they say they've never run into this
situation and don't have anything logged as an issue.

Like I stated above, we can correct the situation by recompiling, but
was just curious if anyone knew why it happens in the first place.  

Thanks,

Jackie Detrich
Sr. Systems Analyst
Mercy Information Systems
detrichj@mercyhealth.com 
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