Brian, you've lost me. If you had to "[emulate] what the translator did" in "ugly, poorly designed cobol," why not just use "ugly, poorly designed cobol" and dispense with the added expense of a Mercator translator?
Somehow I've never pictured you as the Abercrombie & Fitch type. William J. Kammerer Novannet, LLC. Columbus, OH 43221-3859 . USA +1 (614) 487-0320 ----- Original Message ----- From: "Brian Lehrhoff" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "William J. Kammerer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: "'EDI-L Mailing List'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, 19 September, 2004 12:43 PM Subject: Re: [EDI-L] Level 5....??? For once, I think i've got you! At a previous assignment (now located in Chennai, which is not a county in New Jersey), we had a home-grown application running Mercator on a mainframe. Three output cards - data validation, translated data, and error report. If the data failed validation, you didn't create the output and produced the error report. If the data was good, you create the (very fast) output and no error report. We had to parse the input file - an ugly, poorly designed cobol copybook structure - and pretend to create the output fields and see if they were compliant. And we had to write a whole bunch of code to emmulate what the translator did normally if it was used in a normal fashion. Data sent to the network is validated and bounced back if it fails compliance, instead of being delivered. And the bank had no facility to do anything with fails other than report that they happened - no repairs, no resends. So our mission was to never create data that would fail at the network. Now, you reply "why not change the process?" Gee, that's too easy. Effecting change in a large organization - especially a multi-national bank - is very difficult if not totally impossible. So the data mapping had to be done to fit the cobol programs. HIPPA or SWIFT, it doesn't matter. Meanwhile, three kids in India are doing my job, and i'm still on vacation. I just picked up a job application this morning at Starbucks with my coffee. They have real good benefits :) It's just like that great christmas job at the mall - whatever they pay you tends to get spent in the store, even after the generous discount. I have no use for the clothes, but I can definitely go for the discounted latte. I've also explored some work at home jobs, stuffing envelopes for a major bank ... that was one job that they couldn't outsource because "they" didn't want to do it. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Make a clean sweep of pop-up ads. Yahoo! Companion Toolbar. Now with Pop-Up Blocker. Get it for free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/L5YrjA/eSIIAA/yQLSAA/OIFolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> . Please use the following Message Identifiers as your subject prefix: <SALES>, <JOBS>, <LIST>, <TECH>, <MISC>, <EVENT>, <OFF-TOPIC> Access the list online at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EDI-L Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EDI-L/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
