We installed a new release of CA/TMS. Tape processing checked out, regression testing was good, we went into production. Within a few days we had a broken PL/I program and TMS had to be the problem because the code has worked without change for years. We IPLd the old release and it did work. Set a slip for where it was abending in the new release. The bad reg was pointing to a module that had been loaded into CSA. The address on the new release had not been getmained. The address was being passed as the last parameter of the list and documented as optional. No check was being made in the code for the absence of the parameter. BTW, the module in CSA in the old system was a TMS module.
On the other hand, people make use of bugs in compilers. We still have an old FORTRAN compiler because of code that relies on a bug with the handling of common. Both of these are errors, the latter a known and accepted risk. It's the ones like the first that scare me. What is the code doing with the bad data? Where is that darn source from 20+ years ago? Dennis Roach GHG Corporation Lockheed Marten Mission Services FDOC Contract 2100 Space Park Drive LM-15-4BH Houston, Texas 77058 Voice: (281) 336-5027 Cell: (713) 591-1059 Fax: (281) 336-5410 E-Mail: [email protected] All opinions expressed by me are mine and may not agree with my employer or any person, company, or thing, living or dead, on or near this or any other planet, moon, asteroid, or other spatial object, natural or manufactured, since the beginning of time. > -----Original Message----- > From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On > Behalf Of Blaicher, Chris > > Guy, > > While your analysis is correct, that does not help the user that goes > to a new release and suddenly has things blowing up. It is not always > a case of a bad programmer, it can just be a case of forgetting to init > and it never caused a problem in the past. > > > I agree with Ed that IBM should have made a bigger point about this > change and the importance to the user to run with these debugging > options turned on. > > ________________________________ > > Christopher Y. Blaicher > Senior Software Developer > Austin Development Lab > BMC Software > > -----Original Message----- > From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On > Behalf Of Guy Gardoit > > On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 1:02 PM, Roach, Dennis (N-GHG) > <[email protected] > > wrote: > > > ...snip > > > > Bottom line - *it is the programmers responsibility initialize > storage as > > needed.* Changes in LE have bit us in C++ and PL/I code in this area > in > > the past. > > ...snip > > > For the life of me, I can't understand why this is such a surprise or > problem. How many bad programmers were-there/are-there anyway? > > Sorry, but one who breaks the rules, end ups broken. > > Guy Gardoit > z/OS Systems Programming > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
