MIMS Archiving - Any Experience?

[Calator]

Has any site practical experience with archiving & de-archiving, in particular Suppliers. We are familiar with the theory, interested only in practical experience. Did you have any problems such as database left in inconsistent state, cross-references not correctly re-built, did you had a need to de-archive ie at upgrading MIMS and were there any problems? Are there any aspects we need to be aware of?

 

[Glen]

At Cyprus-Amax, we had a heavily modified version of 3.013. We did supplier archiving on a regular basis. We had problems, but not bad enough to prevent us from using the feature.

The biggest problem I remember was that archiving left FPAs in a corrupted state. Cleaning up catalog items and suppliers left FPAs in a 'stuck' state if there was an incomplete FPA for the part/supplier.

We were able to clean up using the de-archive feature then correcting the items, but the problem caused the batch program to fail, and end-users were unaware of the problem. Programmers needed to determine who the buyer was to get the problem corrected before batch processing could complete.

Note, however, that Cyprus was running a customized version of the archiving program that may have been the cause of the problem.



Glen Colbert
gcolbert@RAG_American.com

 

[Calator]

Glen,
Thanks for the reply. Would you know wether the problem has since been fixed by Mincom? My testing in 4.1 revelead supplier with incomplete FPA being rejected by MSR200, which appears as ok. Is it possible that your archiving of stock codes, rather than suppliers, to have caused the problem?

We have also witnessed numerous holes in the FPA records although no archiving of suppliers has been undertaken here, only inventory items. We are yet to attempt to archive suppliers for the first time.

Did your site perform any de-archiving when upgrading MIMS?
Do you have any concerns about accesibility of archived records?

Attn Mincom: we believe the usefulness of the archive could be greately enhanced if:
- it were in a format closer to TEXT so that it could be reviewed outside MIMS
- it were in a format less dependent on MIMS version

As it stands now the numeric fields are compressed and cannot be reviewed, eg by using Corvu on MSF077. The only option to review the archive contents appears to be un-archiving which is not REALLY an option because it defeats its very purpose.

Have you or any other sites a solution to these issues?
Thanks to all of you

 

[OB1too]

Have recently archived suppliers. Created RDL based extracts from Supplier and Business Files prior to actual archiving but post Selection run. I used MSF076 as the Main File and the resultant data was downloaded to CD in Flat File Format and then Loaded into Access for our Finance people to use for perusal.

 

[Calator]

Hi OB1too,
Thanks for sharing your experience. We have now completed the exercise ourselves and took a similar approach to yours.
But it really defeats its purpose, doesn't it? (MIMS archiving I mean). Users, in particular Audit, DO have a need to be able to peruse archived records and this is not available through MIMS or Corvu (or only partially).

Aftershocks: We have now found that we cannot review PO of archived suppliers which seems illogical as one can review their invoices, and PO get archived as a separate entity. W/O is being placed with Mincom.