GSIS sues Questronix and IBM

GSIS fails running their software made by Questronix running on IBM DB2. GSIS sues Questronix and IBM. That’s sounds like GSIS bought fresh milk from the grocery store, then it expires. They still drink it without looking at the expiration date. They get stomach aches, then they decide to sue not only the grocery store, but the farm and probably even the cow. More here at ABS CBN News.

Added info as shared to me by Bert Peronilla through Facebook who has a PhD in Computer Science:

I like your analogy on the GSIS, IBM, Questronix situation. Here are some technical details as I understand them as of today (July 24, 2009.)
GSIS claimed that the application crashes were found by IBM Toronto Lab to be caused by an “overflow” condition when the table space exceeds the limit of 2 TB. This limit of 2 TB for a table space in one partition for DB2 Version 9.1, (which is the one used by GSIS,) is documented in IBM manuals for this version of DB2. Proper performance monitoring of the application should have alerted GSIS that they were approaching the 2 TB limit. However, this was not caught by GSIS and this led to the “overflow” error.
DB2 should have caught this “overflow” condition and issued a WARNING message, followed by a graceful shutdown of the application instead of allowing the application to crash. IBM has sent a DB2 special build to remedy this error which was installed on the GSIS system as of May 26, 2009. Questronix claims that this “overflow” error is no longer occurring after May 26, 2009.
IBM cannot be sued for this error because it is clearly documented in all IBM software contracts that it does NOT guarantee that the software is free of bugs. If GSIS obtained their DB2 directly from IBM and had a Maintenance Agreement with them, IBM will try to fix any program errors to the best of their ability, and if they are not able to do so, this gives the customer the opportunity to try to get their money back. Only for what they paid for DB2; IBM contracts have a Disclaimer that they cannot be sued for any consequential or any other damages.

I like your analogy on the GSIS, IBM, Questronix situation. Here are some technical details as I understand them as of today (July 24, 2009.)

GSIS claimed that the application crashes were found by IBM Toronto Lab to be caused by an “overflow” condition when the table space exceeds the limit of 2 TB. This limit of 2 TB for a table space in one partition for DB2 Version 9.1, (which is the one used by GSIS,) is documented in IBM manuals for this version of DB2. Proper performance monitoring of the application should have alerted GSIS that they were approaching the 2 TB limit. However, this was not caught by GSIS and this led to the “overflow” error.

DB2 should have caught this “overflow” condition and issued a WARNING message, followed by a graceful shutdown of the application instead of allowing the application to crash. IBM has sent a DB2 special build to remedy this error which was installed on the GSIS system as of May 26, 2009. Questronix claims that this “overflow” error is no longer occurring after May 26, 2009.

IBM cannot be sued for this error because it is clearly documented in all IBM software contracts that it does NOT guarantee that the software is free of bugs. If GSIS obtained their DB2 directly from IBM and had a Maintenance Agreement with them, IBM will try to fix any program errors to the best of their ability, and if they are not able to do so, this gives the customer the opportunity to try to get their money back. Only for what they paid for DB2; IBM contracts have a Disclaimer that they cannot be sued for any consequential or any other damages.