At 10:18 AM 8/22/00 -0700, Ken Graham wrote:
>Also, Gavin, it might be helpful if you would read Jerry Fochtmans comments
>as well.
>He experienced the same level of support from the lab ;-), as I did.

Wait a minute, I think you need to re-read my post....

I did not indicate that I had a problem with the support from the Lab.
Indeed it was quite the opposite!  It was the lab themselves that were
interested in understanding more about the issue, such that several
took time from their busy schedules to look into the issue.

The roadblock I experienced was one/more engineers 'between' the RC
and the lab.  These are not, I repeat, the same lab team that did the
work on large files.  So apparently you do not understand the different
between the lab, response center engineers and the offline/expert
center folks and how these engineers inter-relate and their roles.

Furthermore, the issue with obtaining/writing to mapped pointers
obtain through means other than HPFOPEN existed prior to large files.
In fact, it is a re-creatable problem on at least 5.5pp7, 6.0 and 6.0pp1.
And I also have it from other sources that its been observed on other
releases as well.  So blaming it all on the work done by the lab to
provide mapped files is incorrect.  It is quite easy to recreate the
problem you've also experienced using PM on systems prior to 6.5.

Perhaps you are assuming that the lab engineers read each and every
problem similar in nature, which is incorrect.  There is an intermediate
team of engineers who evaluate these items and work to recreate them.
 From what I understand, they make an assessment, and more often than
not when PM coding is involved, the calls are closed-out.

Those of us that work with the lab engineers realize that it is not
appropriate for us to contact them each and every time we uncover what
may be a problem.  If we did, they would never make progress on the
many important issues that only they can progress.  Rather, the process
for us is to work through the support organization.  It is that process
that sometimes many of us feel is broken and in need of mgmt's attention.

Instead of launching a full frontal attack it is usually better to try
and understand what happened and possibly why.  Criticizing the lab for
something they were unaware of does not always help further your case.
Your assumption that HP mgmt determines just how an engineer is to
respond is incorrect.  It would be like Vinnie knowing and approving
your postings to this list.