IPROF 98 Roundtable

IPROF Management Roundtable

How to detect if a PowerPatch
is installed on a customer system

Q: How can I detect if PowerPatch 4 has been installed on a customer’s machine without waiting for them to get a binding error when they load my updated Year 2K software? The PowerPatch process does not leave any really good indication that a particular PowerPatch is installed.

Jim Sartain: I’ve asked several HP people if they knew a way to do this. It was straightforward, and I came up dry. In an interesting turn around I asked Stan Sieler “Stan, I have a management round table question for you,” and unfortunately he didn’t know of any way to do it. So we don’t know of any good way to do this other than calling, a procedure that’s not available. You have to do some fairly complicated gymnastics. So what we’d like to do is maybe look at changing the SWINFO file or something like that to make it a little bit more intuitive to answer this question or having a system variable.

Cecile Chi: When I dial into a customer’s account or a customer’s machine, first thing I do is show is SHOWVAR HPSPLITYEAR. That tells me.

Jim Sartain: That’s the general solution that people have. Every release they try some, look for some new feature that was added in that release. That means if you have software that’s sensitive to Express 2, Express 3, Express 4, you have to think of a different feature in each case, and that means you have to know what they are. We’d like to look at it in a more intuitive way than that.

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Copyright 1998, The 3000 NewsWire. All rights reserved.



	IPROF Management Roundtable

	How to detect if a PowerPatch is installed on a customer system
	Q: How can I detect if PowerPatch 4 has been installed on a customer’s machine without waiting for them to get a binding error when they load my updated Year 2K software? The PowerPatch process does not leave any really good indication that a particular PowerPatch is installed. Jim Sartain: I’ve asked several HP people if they knew a way to do this. It was straightforward, and I came up dry. In an interesting turn around I asked Stan Sieler “Stan, I have a management round table question for you,” and unfortunately he didn’t know of any way to do it. So we don’t know of any good way to do this other than calling, a procedure that’s not available. You have to do some fairly complicated gymnastics. So what we’d like to do is maybe look at changing the SWINFO file or something like that to make it a little bit more intuitive to answer this question or having a system variable. Cecile Chi: When I dial into a customer’s account or a customer’s machine, first thing I do is show is SHOWVAR HPSPLITYEAR. That tells me. Jim Sartain: That’s the general solution that people have. Every release they try some, look for some new feature that was added in that release. That means if you have software that’s sensitive to Express 2, Express 3, Express 4, you have to think of a different feature in each case, and that means you have to know what they are. We’d like to look at it in a more intuitive way than that.
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Copyright 1998, The 3000 NewsWire. All rights reserved.