We recently upgraded Natural on MF from v4.2.6 to v8.2.2 on Feb 19, 2012.
Clients previously using an older version of Entire Connection for downloads experienced some errors that were resolved by having them upgrade their PCC software to current v4.5.2.4 (per Software AG support’s instructions).
An end user reported this morning receiving Error 17-073 Data Tranfer terminated abnormally. Alphanumeric fields with length greater than 253 are not supported for the specified format.
The end user states this download worked before the upgrade. We’re unclear whether she means before the Natural upgrade or her upgrade to Entire Connection software and are currently trying to get more information.
Has anyone else experienced this issue? Is it a limitation in Natural or in Entire Connection?
We are also currently trying to obtain information about the specifics of the download program she was running to determine the format used.
Which file format did he use when he received the error? Please note that alphanumeric fields with legth > 253 characters only work for HTML, XML. ASCII and Cobol (see Entire Connection documentation).
Not really sure what format the client was using at the time. While I understand what you are saying, the client says this was an existing Natural program that worked in Entire Connection prior to the upgrade.
The field in question is a field defined as A390 redefined as A78/5… The Natural program is pretty much a straight read of an Adabas file, moving values into the redefined A78/5 and then writing the output file using the A390 field.
Not sure what would have changed to make the difference between one version and another. We will contact the client to ask what format she was using just to be sure that wasn’t what changed and caused the problem.
The file transfer protocol was changed for Natural 8.2. It could be that your problem is a side effect of this protocol change. I was not able to reproduce this problem with a simple download to a field defined as A390, redefined as A78/5. If you call Software AG support, we could analyze the problem in deep.
Thanks for trying Norman. We’ve actually already got an open support incident logged with Software AG support.
I believe they requested us to get a trace listing through Entire Connection. We’ve passed that request on the the end user so she can run her download again and capture the information for us to send back to support. Hopefully that will provide some more information and a clue as to what is happening.