Kevin, This issue pops up about once a year. It is an artifact of a workaround to a challenge with a database.
You did not indicate what database you are using... but I can tell you that it is either SQL Server or Sybase (and since you did indicate you are running on Windows and we do not support Sybase there I can say that it is SQL Server in your case) The issue is that SQL Server and Sybase has an odd behavior. If you have a character string that happens to have a backslash in it that it followed by a carriage return character, the database will remove the two characters from the character field. We have no clue why it does it, we just know that it does. Since we encode the definitions of qualificaitons and assignments and since we use backslashes as separator characters in that encoding and since your definition has a character string that is a return..... What we did (way back in 1991 by the way) was to protect this scenario by inserting a space before the return. Good/bad/indifferent, it is the way we solved the problem. This is 99% innocuous and causes no issue -- but in situations like the scenario you have here, it introduces an extra character and can cause issues. The strategy that Fred described that includes trims resolves the problem as the logic trims off the extra space that is inserted for those databases (and has no issues if it is Oracle or DB2 as the database). Recently, logic has been introduced in the system to try and mask the issue by BMC reversing the extra space for those databases when we recognize the pattern. This is where people with the latest version are not seeing the results of the issue. Has it been resolved everywhere -- we think so. But if there is a miss, the trim strategy can be used as a workaround. I hope that helps at least explain what is occurring. Now, if we could go back 20 years and use a different workaround, would we? Probably. But, it is what we chose at the time to protect the definition from corruption. Doug Mueller ________________________________ From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Kevin Begosh Sent: Tuesday, January 04, 2011 10:27 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Wierd Workflow Issue ** I will give this a try, I am still using the old admin tool. Thanks. Have any idea why it would change my filter after restart of the server? On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 1:23 PM, Grooms, Frederick W <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: What I typically do in my code is force the space replacement REPLACE($Comments HTML$, LTRIM(RTRIM(" ")), "<BR>") Fred NOTE: This does not seem to work the same when using the Developer Studio (It seems to want to put 2 characters in instead of the single one) -----Original Message----- From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>] On Behalf Of Kevin Begosh Sent: Tuesday, January 04, 2011 12:13 PM To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: Wierd Workflow Issue ** List, I am having a wierd workflow issue and I am wondering if anyone else has ever had this issue. I have a filter that goes through and takes the data from a character field and pushes it to another character field and adds some HTML tags to it. The main one I am concerned with is the one where I add <BR> anytime there is a carriage return. So my set fields value looks like this: REPLACE($Comments HTML$, "", "<BR>") and it works fine. The problem I am having now is everytime the AR Server is restarted the system comes through and adds a space my set fields value so it looks like this REPLACE($Comments HTML$, " ", "<BR>") Has anyone ever seen this or know why ARS would add that extra space in the filter? This is all custom workflow. ARS 7.1 Windows 2003 _______________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org<http://www.arslist.org/> attend wwrug11 www.wwrug.com<http://www.wwrug.com/> ARSList: "Where the Answers Are" -- Kevin Begosh _attend WWRUG11 www.wwrug.com ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are"_ _______________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org attend wwrug11 www.wwrug.com ARSList: "Where the Answers Are"
