ACR/Detail 9.2 Release Notes

ACR/Detail 9.2 enhancements include:

Copy history based on relative date

This enhancement is applicable to z/OS, Windows and Unix.

Customers who have large history databases (over a million records) would like to clean them up. They cannot use a reorg/delete, because they take 12+ hours to run with that many records. They have discovered that they are able to copy the desired records to a new history database, clear the old database, then move the saved records back. Currently the utility to copy can only sort based on specific keys or a specific date range. They would like to be able to sort based on a relative date so that they can automate the process. A new ‘relative date’ option was added to the ‘Copy History’ utility.

Allow Multiple Freeform Reports

his enhancement is applicable to z/OS, AS400, Windows and Unix.

Allow a user to create more than one Freeform Report per job. This Freeform Report could be customized so that it contains different data than the first freeform report. Customers will then be able to make reports that could be tailored to specific end-users needs.

Allow subtraction on the LHS/RHS or both in a calculation item

This enhancement is applicable to z/OS, AS400, Windows and Unix.

During the design of the controls for a customer, we ran into a snag where we discovered you couldn't subtract in a calculation. You can use the - as an operator, but you currently can't use a - on the LHS or RHS for 2 or more items. This would be a beneficial enhancement because some of the results needed could have been done via a calculation and stored for later in an internal item. However, we had to adjust our design to not use calculations, but instead use rules. For example, the logic needed was something like below:

E-005 + I-002 - I-004 - I-006 - I-011

If we weren't able to readjust our design to use only rules, we would have needed to create at least 4 calculations to reach the same result.

Allow copying internal and external translation table definitions to a new translation table

This enhancement is applicable to z/OS, AS400

This gives the user the ability to copy one table to another with a new table name. This reduces the amount of entry that is needed for multiple tables that may be similar.

Delimited Data Field to Display Position and Length in Extract Window

This enhancement is applicable to z/OS and Windows.

If partial data is extracted from a delimited data field (DDF), for better clarity, field position and length should also be displayed in Extract Window/View Definition. Currently only the delimited field no. is displayed. The first two select statements look identical but in fact they are using different portion of DDF 2. Instead of displaying 'DDF 0002'. This change will display the position and length for each DDF.

Email Notification

This enhancement is applicable to AS400, Unix.

Not all the public email servers are able to receive the emails sent out from this enhancement, verify the feasibility of the email address as needed.

When email notification is turned on, the rule highest return code is used to check against all the messages setup for the job. Multiple messages may be setup for the same return code. Instead of sending an email for each message, the return code messages and report attachments for each email recipient are consolidated. As a result, each email recipient will receive one email.

For each email recipient, the balancing/reconciliation will send email and report attachments according to the report switches specified for the messages. The send-mail will be submitted automatically as soon as the balancing/reconciliation job is completed. If the job sends email to N recipients, a total of N send-mail jobs will be run and the users will be notified with N job completion messages.

The following reports can be attached for each email.

• JOBLOG / SYSOUT
• Control Report
• Recap Report
• User Report
• Freeform Report

Note: For AS400 there is a 400 character limitation for the amount of message data that can be entered in for the body of the email.

Dynamic Input Text Highlighting Based on Selected Definition

This enhancement is applicable to Windows.

To assist ACR/Workbench users creating extract definitions or interpreting existing definitions. Users can highlight text in the point-and-click area that applies to the selected extract definition. For example, if the user clicks a Select statement that says, "SELECT if position 7 for a length of 7 is equal to a field in the data source, then that criteria would be highlighted in real time on the lower portion of the input source window (assuming a file is selected).

Ability to get pop-up menu of extraction definitions on right click on input source pane

This enhancement is applicable to Windows.

Requesting the ability to select a portion of the input source and right-click to get a popup menu with the option to add an extraction definition (determined by the product and access mode) based on the selection in the extract window. This is similar to the current point-and-click in ACR/Workbench, except instead of moving the mouse to the top of the window and clicking the button (to add a key field, for example), you could right-click in the input source and select the appropriate button right near your mouse.

Remove Item Number from Cycle Table Items

This enhancement is applicable to AS400.

The screens on the AS400 for cycle tables use an item number to define the record which holds 10 cycle numbers. The user shouldn’t have to create the cycle tables based on item numbers. The item numbers should be transparent to the user.

Create a UNITR report when running Utilities

This enhancement is applicable to AS400.

The utilities on the AS400 never printed the UNITR report explaining the parameters that were used for the utility. Changed all utilities to be consistent with the other platforms and produce the same reports.

Allow ODBC Data Source Name Override

This enhancement is applicable to Windows, Unix.

The ODBC Data Source Name can now be overridden in batch scripts by setting its FILEID value, where FILEID represents the unique File ID for each input source.

When users run balancing/reconciliation jobs using batch scripts on Windows/UNIX platform, FILEID for each input file is processed as an environment variable. The value set for the FILEID environment variable is then mapped to the input dataset name.

• For non-RDBMS input, FILEID setting is required and the value set for the FILEID is the input dataset name – existing process.
• For Oracle file organization/type input, FILEID setting is not required. The Oracle Database Name is set at system level – existing process.
• For ODBC organization/type input, FILEID setting is optional.
  • When ODBC FILEID is not set, the default Data Source Name specified in the file definition will be used to connect to the ODBC database – existing process.
  • When ODBC FILEID is set, the value set for the FILEID is the override value for the ODBC Data Source Name and it will be used to connect to the ODBC database – this is the newly added process for balancing/reconciliation.

To allow ODBC Data Source Name override, the following batch changes are required:

• ACR/Summary balancing will be modified to process ODBC Data Source Name overrides when applicable.
• ACR/Detail reconciliation will be modified to process ODBC Data Source Name overrides when applicable.

Scroll through an input source using mouse wheel in Workbench

This enhancement is applicable to Windows.

This new change allows users to use the mouse wheel, to scroll up and down in an input source. This change can be used in the input file definitions for the job or for an external translation table.