Hello everybody,

There certainly is a lot of traffic with respect to this PP5 issue.
I promised that I would investigate the problem myself if a response
was not posted to this list by noon (PST). As it turns out, I was
impatient and I made some calls this morning. I now feel like I
completely understand the situation. I am willing to share some
information with the list at this point, but I want to point out
a couple of things first.

#1) This situation is very much under control. From a technical
point-of-view, the problem is completely understood. The support and
lab folks that are working on the problem have done an exceptional
job of understanding the problem completely and taking decisive
and appropriate action. I had nothing to do with either identifying
or resolving the problem so the credit belongs to the ones that did.

#2) There has already been a great deal of information written up
on this issue and the CSY team is actively working on distributing
all of the necessary information to all of the appropriate players.
The list of "appropriate players" includes the support community,
all of HPs partners (resellers etc), and customers. Much of this
infomation has already been distributed, the support community
is the most well informed. This is a big job and everyone is
working as fast as is prudent.

#3) I can certainly understand why everyone is so interested in
this issue. From my perspective, everyone at HP involved in this
problem has done a great job. Many people have put in a lot of
extra effort to deal with this in a timely and professional manner.

I am not going to attempt to publish a complete history for the
problem (it would take too much time) but I will disclose some
technical "highlights. Hopefully this information will make the
situation more clear. I know that there are plans in place to make
sure everyone is well informed.

  - The fix/patch that introduced the problem was identified quickly.
    The offending PatchID was MPEKX79.
  - The MPEKX79 patch was superceded by (and therefore included in)
    a few other paches. Specifically: MPEKXB5, MPEKXE9, MPEXK94, and
    MPEKXG6. MPEKSB5 was included in PP5.
  - All of the offending patches have been marked as BAD.
  - The original fix was actually a performance enhancemnt aimed
    at increasing the performance of specific MPE operation (cutting
    back the EOF on a large file). There have been some incorrect
    statements made with respect to what the original fix was for. The
    concept behind the performance enhancement is valid, there was
    a bug in the implementation. The original fix had nothing to do
    with TELNET, Reflections, or DBUTIL, etc. That information is
    simply incorrect.
  - The lab has already created a new patch, MPEKXJ3, which supercedes
    all of the previous patches and corrects the flaw. This patch
    is currently in BETA TEST. The expert center is confident in the
    quality of this patch but is monitoring the situation closely
    given the seriousness of the situation.
  - There have been some mis-leading statements made about the problem
    description. The problem has been characterized as a DBUTIL ERASE
    problem, that is inaccurate. DBUTIL ERASE can expose the problem.
    However, DBUTIL ERASE is a victum of the symptom, not the cause.
    Several factors have to conspire for the problem to occur.

Expect to see more detailed information in the near future.