Release 1598 addresses a problem encountered by Riverside yesterday,
their first day after installation of the r1576 VAX/SKX release.  That
release introduced a new proration indicator whose values normally are
either blank (yes) or 'N' (no), and although the indicators were displayed
as spaces on EDHC screens, Riverside received error messages complaining
about invalid values, forcing them to explicitly enter a space or an 'N' on
every line, which is something of a nuisance.

It turns out this is a startup glitch.  When new online rosters are created
or new compute transactions are entered in batch or online, the prorate
indicator is properly initialized to a space, however, pre-existing entries
are not, and can contain non-printable values for which the system just
displays a blank.  How did the indicators in old entries come to be
uninitialized?  The answer is: historical accident.  The one-character
indicator was taken from filler space, and that filler was never initialized.
We looked through data for a variety of our sites and found that it
consistently contained hex low values.  For years and years, no one ever
looked at that space, so it didn't matter what the values were until now.

The pre-existing entries can be rosters that were created before r1576
was installed, or transactions sitting in the THF table.  Those transactions
could potentially have been created months ago, as PPS is perfectly
happy to accept online compute transactions targeted at a compute
far in the future.  Because of this ability to enter transactions in advance,
there's no perfect time to schedule installation of r1576 that can be
guaranteed not to have pre-existing data.  Any site could be bitten
by this situation, hence the fix.

Two programs are modified:

- PPEDTPAY - to relax the edit on prorate indicator to accept hex low values
   as well as blank or 'N'.
- PPCPAPAY (invoked by PPP380) - to convert hex low values to a space
   which will be carried through to the PAR file.

There are no table updates.

R1598 should be installed asap for sites that already have r1576 implemented.
For other sites it should be included with r1576 and r1593.

Please send us your official ok.

   bvb