Bug research - how to use

What offers the bug research of the CURSOR Distribution to you?

Problem description, affected products, processing status, solutions and workarounds are some of the things you can access with our bug research.
As the result of a full-text search with a simple formulation of search words you will receive a list of possible bug descriptions.
By selecting a single bug you will get to a clear summary of the recent information status to this bug.

We receive the contents of our bug-data base directly from the IBM. Depending on the actuality of a bug, a daily or weekly actualization occurs.

Additional to the bug information of the IBM we evaluate the to the product releases published fix lists. If a bug is listed in a fixlist as solved, we enlist this in our evaluation under the bug description. Thereby a bug can be listed in more than one fixlist, even if it was recorded in only one version. The here by us provided information is more actual than the by the IBM published status information of a bug which seems to be released relatively late. Here you will find out faster, if a bug has been fixed and you get a good overview of which version you can use now.

The access to still unsolved bugs is granted by the IBM only to registered users. Also on our site these bugs can only be seen after a registration.

How does the research work?

Insert search words or the APAR-number to a problem. Through full-text-search our bug search shows all recorded bugs that are linked to the search words or directly the with the APAR-number attached bug. The bug search features three search fields with which you can systematically define your search closer.

The field [Keywords- error description]

This field is used for the full text search in our bug database. With the here deposited terms we scan both the captions and the whole description text of the bugs for hits. Thereby you can use the same syntax as when searching with Google to formulate the queries:

Insert one or more search words - if multiple terms are used, the search occurs alternatively (OR).
If you want to be sure, that a search word is contained, a "+"-mark has to be put right before the search word (without blank).
A "-"-mark means that a search word must not be contained.
Phrases can be protected with inverted commas.
If you are not sure about the correct writing, you can put a "*" as joker-mark right behind the beginning of a word (minimum 2 letters). But a search word must not begin with a joker.

The field [APAR number]

The IBM identifies recorded bugs over the so called APAR number (APAR = Authorized Program Analysis Report). The APAR number contains all information to a bug. If you know the APAR number, you can query all information to this bug directly - especially interesting in the case of bugs which are currently waiting for a solution.

If you insert the APAR-number, you will get the information only to this specific bug.
You can insert the APAR number also without the prefix letters (IT, IC, …).
The fields [Keywords - error description] and [Date] are not relevant for this query and will be ignored with the entry of an APAR number.

The field [Date]

With the field [Date] you can restrict the query on younger results and exclude older notes.

The date can be selected with the Datepicker (Icon) or has to be inserted with the format YYYY-MM-DD. The default date 2006-01-01 (Informix) and 2004-01-01 (DB2) contains all bugs, because no older bugs are contained in the data base.

Start of a search and display of the results

The search is triggered by a click on the [Search]-button or the return-key. In the hit-list you can have a quick look on the bugs by moving the cursor on the APAR number (Tooltip). With a direct click on the number a bug description opens in a new window or tab. Please note, that maximum 200 hits will be displayed.

The results will be displayed assorted after their APAR number, so that the most recent bug description will always be found at the top of the result list.

We hope, that this tool will help you fix your problems with your DB2 or Informix installation. For questions to single problems we are available at any time. About suggestions for a further improvement of our tools we are very thankful.

Your CURSOR-Support-Team