System quality

INDEX | ORGANISATION | TIME LINE | PEOPLE | STORY | RESEARCH METHOD | COMMENTARY | FINDINGS | HELP | BOTTOM

Many bugs found in version II

1994 Apr-Jun
By end April 1994 there were 120 errors and queries with phase II (00606).

By end June 1994, things were improving (00521, 00575), some bugs had been fixed and Gordan thought there no outstanding data problems (01050).

1994 Jul-Sep
By early July 1994 of the 178 errors and queries raised with version II, 100 were bugs in the programs or data (00606) although there were only about 50 or 60 different problems (00525).

By August 1994 the bugs had been reduced to manageable proportions (00633, 00747).


Electronic transfer problems

1994 Jul-Sep
At end June 1994 the transfer of data between Holland and London was not working (00586) and there were still transfer problems in August (00711).

In September 1994 the newsletter reported that the backlog of policy transfers between offices had been cleared but there was still confusion over the operation of the transfer mechanism which they hoped would be alleviated by the new System Manual (00802).

1994 Oct-Dec
In October 1994, Gordan reckoned that the electronic transfer was now working (01061).


Sybase database crashes

1993 Oct-Dec
Around November 1993 they had problems with the Novell communication protocol and Sybase which particularly affected Essex. This was eventually solved by installing a Unix communications protocol but 2 weeks were lost on the phase II work by the team putting in a temporary fix (00337).

1994 Apr-Jun
In June 1994, the database was crashing sporadically with a Sybase error. This mainly affected London and sometimes occurred once a fortnight and sometimes more than once on one day (00583, 00522, 00561).

1994 Jul-Sep
In August and September 1994 the Sybase crash only occurred once (01058).


Still outstanding bugs in version II

1995 Jan-Mar
In January 1995, Keith found that endorsement premiums were not always shown correctly in reports (00825).


System too slow

1995 Jan-Mar
By January 1995, there was general agreement that the migration to Unix had not improved performance which was still too slow in some areas (01064, 00830) particularly in claims (01120).


INDEX | ORGANISATION | TIME LINE | PEOPLE | STORY | RESEARCH METHOD | COMMENTARY | FINDINGS | HELP | TOP

© Clare Tagg 2000