The day evolves from drizzle (14°C) to various shades of gray to light rain and back to grey.
Yep, that is a Belgian summer in the making.

I received a user profile and password for the Nordic system so I log on and check the problem. They reported that they couldn't get a contract activated. I check that contract and it is active, without apparent problems. A few messages later I get the correct problem report. They wanted to change the prices on the contract and couldn't get the new prices active.
Aha
I check all the files involved and find the situation as it should be before the running of the activation program. So all looks normal. I inform the user that he should run the activation program but later (in the job logs) I find out that he left early. So I run the activation program myself. Well it run without errors but when I check later I notice that the contract is not updated !! So there is something really wrong with the program. The Contract change requests are updated though so I know where the program makes an error but it is in a place where it shouldn't (it doesn't find a record but I can see that very record, displayed on screen). The only way to get the exact problem is running the program trough the debugger. The user profile I got is for a normal user so I don't have access to a command line (which I can get around to) but I also don't have authority to the debugger. Can't get around that.
And, of course running the program the first time has used and altered the request records so I don't have live data anymore. And I cannot just make a guess at it (well I can but I can't ..) because this is the production environment. Any test I do ends up on an invoice to a real client.

All this checking is done using a telnet session on the AS/400 in Norway which shouldn't be a problem. Only I have to wait several minute after each command I enter (for example I started a query resulting in 6 records and got the result back some time after reading an article on Linux World and I am not at all a fast reader). That is not normal but I guess it has something to do with the communications module on the Nordic system because after 17h00 things go much smoother (wait times of about a minute).

Adios