"After I poured sand into my petrol tank, Ford refused to pay for cleaning out the system and replacing the damaged parts.
Manufacturers eh?"
Well put Richard.
While IÂ detest Epicor's attitude when it comes to support (particularly in regard to the hoops they make US jump through before THEY acknowledge a bug and open an SCR) -Â in this case I can't fault them.
I think it is easy for them to say "show me a system that does this 100%" - and you won't find one. (When it comes to software quality, the true test for specific issues comes down to a comparison to similar price point competitors' products - and none would likely pass this test for this issue)
I've never used a system in 25 years that 100% prevents entry (in every character field in the system) of 'special' (undesireable) characters that can cause misinterpretation of the data when pumped through another process.
Telnet/character based client shells talking to closed VMS and UNIX hosted systems were suffering this problem 25 years ago - and the explosion of languages (each with their own special reserved characters) that are now used to develop single systems (and not always cleanly demarked per system 'layer') make it an even more of a daunting task today than it was then.
At best, you can hope for some protection on record key fields (such as "Warehouse" as someone in this groaningly large & growing topic thread mentioned earlier). For a description field though? (Wishful thinking.)
The performance hit users would feel if every character field entry point control was tied to a pre-wash "check for undesired characters" precommitment-(to db)-process would be ugly (and Vantage is already a slow UI performer).
If you have specific limited entry points you must protect, go on MSDN/technet and grab yourself some free .Net client code to check the CharCode of each character in the string (before allowing the update method to execute) and only allow entry of ASCII code ranges equivalent to "0-9", "A-Z" or "a-z"... (While you're at it, perhaps force all lower case characters to uppercase!)
Frankly, it is just easier to make it a 'people rule' of 'just don't do it' (and occasionally audit critical fields to see if they are complying - with training reinforcement as needed)... Nothing new about that.
Rob Brown
Â
________________________________
From: Richard Bailey <
rbailey@...>
To: "
vantage@yahoogroups.com" <
vantage@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, July 2, 2009 9:46:30 AM
Subject: RE: [Vantage] Re: Why Epicor forcing me to pay for fixing bugs in Vantage
After I poured sand into my petrol tank, Ford refused to pay for cleaning out the system and replacing the damaged parts.
Manufacturers eh?
Regards
Richard
Richard Bailey
IT Systems
DUDLEY I n d u s t r i e s L i m i t e d, Preston Road, Lytham, Lancashire, FY8 5AT, UK
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* rbailey@dudleyindus tries.co. uk<mailto:grbailey@dudleyindu stries.co. uk> ü www.dudleyindustrie s.co.uk
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From: vantage@yahoogroups .com [mailto:vantage@yahoogroups .com] On Behalf Of CharlieSmith
Sent: 02 July 2009 14:41
To: vantage@yahoogroups .com
Subject: RE: [Vantage] Re: Why Epicor forcing me to pay for fixing bugs in Vantage
This goes for just about any key item. Special characters (any character
other than 0-9, A-Z, a-z, or -) should not be in any ID field. I don't
like spaces either. It's just another keystroke that is generally
unnecessary.
Charlie Smith
Smith Business Services / 2W Technologies LLC
www.vistaconsultant .com <
http://www.vistaconsultant.com/> /
www.2WTech.com
____________ _________ _________ __
From: vantage@yahoogroups .com<mailto:vantage% 40yahoogroups. com> [mailto:vantage@yahoogroups .com<mailto:vantage% 40yahoogroups. com>] On Behalf
Of Vic Drecchio
This is why I am adamant with my system and users and do my very best to
keep Part Numbers and descriptions free of anything except 0-9 and A-Z.
____________ _________ _________ __
From: vantage@yahoogroups .com<mailto:vantage% 40yahoogroups. com> <mailto:vantage% 40yahoogroups. com>
[mailto:vantage@yahoogroups .com<mailto:vantage% 40yahoogroups. com> <mailto:vantage% 40yahoogroups. com> ] On
Behalf
Of dwalker@lesueurinc. com<mailto:dwalker% 40lesueurinc. com> <mailto:dwalker% 40lesueurinc. com>
If what Manasa said is true; then it is clearly a bug. No logic in any
system should allow users to enter characters that will knowingly cause
downstream errors.
Either block/filter/ prevent the erroneous input ---or--- trap the error
downstream in some sort of error correction routine.
Don't let the system burn down when it trips on the erroneous characters
and let the customer fend for themselves to fix it. :-(
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