QTP: OUTPUT AT

[Kesterson, Roger]

PH 7.10.G2, OpenVMS 7.1
-----------------------

In the QTP manual, it says that without the START OF option, an OUTPUT AT
action is performed at the end of a transaction group.  I have a QTP program
similar to the following:

ACCESS BOM1

SORT ON PARENT_PART ON COMPONENT_PART ON EFFECTIVE_START_DATE

OUTPUT BOM2 ADD AT COMPONENT_PART
ITEM EFFECTIVE_START_DATE OF BOM2 INITIAL EFFECTIVE_START_DATE OF BOM1

I would have expected the file BOM2 to get the record with the latest
effective start date, but it actually gets the earliest.  The effective
start date is a VMSDATE.  I tried converting it to a CHAR*8 (YYYYMMDD), and
sorting on that, but got the same results.  I didn't get the desired results
until I changed the sort to:

SORT ON PARENT_PART ON COMPONENT_PART ON EFFECTIVE_START_DATE D

This seems to contradict the manual, or is my brain just not functioning
correctly today?

Thanks,

Roger Kesterson
Senior Programming Analyst
MTD Southwest, Inc.