Date:         Fri, 1 Mar 2002 15:35:15 GMT
Reply-To:     "Bruce F. Gilsen" <bruce.gilsen@FRB.GOV>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         "Bruce F. Gilsen" <bruce.gilsen@FRB.GOV>
Organization: Federal Reserve Board, Wash, DC
Subject:      Hot fixes

At the NESUG Futures Forum, I made some suggestions about
the hot fixes, and some discussion took place.  SI has made
some changes, and IMHO there's both good and bad.

1. If you subscribe to the TSNEWS-L, you receive e-mails
about new hotfixes.  These mailings have been greatly improved.
Before, individual e-mails were sent for each hot fix.  Now,
there are weekly e-mails with links to the main hot fix page
at http://www.sas.com/techsup/download/hotfix/hotfix.html) and
a "What's New" page at
http://www.sas.com/techsup/download/hotfix/82_SBCS_whats_new.html

The What's New page has a chronological summary of hot fixes,
which makes it easier to figure out what SI has added and when.
This is what I requested at NESUG, so thanks SI!

2. The main hot fix page doesn't have a link to the What's New
page, so if you aren't on TSNEWS-L, you might not realize that
the What's New page even exists.  Adding that link would be
easy to do and helpful.

3. The weekly e-mails do not have any information about 8.1
hot fixes, so naturally I assumed that they were not being issued.
In fact, there are several recent 8.1 hot fixes, including a few
as recently as February 2002.  It never occurred to check for 8.1
hot fixes, since I assumed that the TSNEWS-L mailings were complete.
So, now I'm going back to apply the 8.1 hot fixes well after they
were available.  Ouch!

For people still running 8.1, it would be helpful for the TSNEWS-L
notices to document new hot fixes for both 8.1 and 8.2.

Bruce Gilsen bruce.gilsen@frb.gov
speaking only for myself (and my fantasy baseball team)