Generic indexing CMOD 8.5

[Urban Axelsson]

Does anyone know if IBM removed the support for generic indexing with the old style of indexing.
Until now both formats worked.
This is what I found.
I have not found any official information to confirm this.

************************************************
The default format prio 7.x
************************************************
FIELD NAMES BEGIN:
rdate
studentID
FIELD NAMES END:
08/13/99
0012345678
statement8.out
0
0
09/13/99
0012345678
statement9.out
0
0

************************************************
Only format after version 8.5.x
************************************************
CODEPAGE:819
GROUP_FIELD_NAME:rdate
GROUP_FIELD_VALUE:08/13/99
GROUP_FIELD_NAME:studentID
GROUP_FIELD_VALUE:0012345678
GROUP_OFFSET:0
GROUP_LENGTH:0
GROUP_FILENAME:/arstmp/statement8.out
GROUP_FIELD_NAME:rdate
GROUP_FIELD_VALUE:09/13/99
GROUP_FIELD_NAME:studentID
GROUP_FIELD_VALUE:0012345678
GROUP_OFFSET:0
GROUP_LENGTH:0
GROUP_FILENAME:/arstmp/statement9.out

[Alessandro Perucchi]

Hello Urban,

All I can say is, until 8.4.X it works without any problems (I have some customers which have still the old way to index).
And to be honest I haven't tested it yet with 8.5, but it should still be there (seen nowhere that it was really removed).

Cheers,
Alessandro

[pankaj.puranik]

Urban

Did you try specifying the absolute file path in the indexer file?

[Urban Axelsson]

I have recived information from the IBM software support that confirms my analysis.

Respond from IBM:
I did some tests with the Generic Index in the old style and found the same result: it still is working in 841 but not in 8501. I will check it out if this is a bug or if this old format was depreciated.

[Urban Axelsson]

Yes, there is no difference.

Urban

Did you try specifying the absolute file path in the indexer file?

[Urban Axelsson]

The latest respond from IBM

IBM Update 2011-06-22 07:47
received response from Development that the old generic index format   
is not supported in CMOD MP V8.5.                                       
Forwarded the information to the customer                               
                                                                       
ACTION PLAN:                                                           
============                                                           
wait for further feedback from L3 to documentation   

[Urban Axelsson]

The latest respond from IBM

IBM Update 2011-06-23 08:55
I forwarded your response to the OD development and here their feedback:
"This support has been removed from the 8.5 source code. It would be difficult to restore it in 8.5, because there were so many changes for Unicode."
They will discuss it internal but there seems to be not a lot of hope. So it may be better to contact Services to convert the applications to use the new format.

[Urban Axelsson]

The latest respond from IBM

IBM Update 2011-06-30 08:55
We understand your pain, but the old format is not going to be supported any more.

This is not a defect and the documentation for V8.5 is being updated as well as a Flash is being published to inform customer that the old Generic Index is no longer supported.

So, although we did not warn customers that this support was removed, we have not claimed it was supported in V7.1 or later either. We allowed customers to continue to use the old Generic Index file format in order to give them time to transition to the new format.

Even the question to the IBM OD collegues in Europe if they know a customer with the same problem have had no result until now.
So far, you are the only customer who has complained.

[Alessandro Perucchi]

Even the question to the IBM OD collegues in Europe if they know a customer with the same problem have had no result until now.
So far, you are the only customer who has complained.

I know another customer who still use (8.4.1.5 if I'm not wrong) the old generic index format, and since they are doing a refresh of their load scripts, they had the intention to use the new format.
So for them it's not so a problem.

And nearly all of my customers are using the new format and nearly none of them have done yet the migration to 8.5, except one, but that's a new installation.

Probably that doesn't give you comfort...

Cheers,
Alessandro