Compared to the time and effort required to:
1) Rekey the programs from listings (which you probably DON'T have)
OR
2) Reverse engineer what the programs do and recreate them again from
scratch (which is also probably next to impossible)
$75.00 per program is cheap...
I'm not sure of the exact amount spent, but we paid between $ 1000.00 - $
2000.00 to retrieve the source for 3 unobservable RPG programs, 2 display
files, and 2 printer file when we lost the source code. I probably spent
another week cleaning up the retrieved code.
Compare that with the approximate 200 hours spent by another consultant
writing that code at $ 150.00 per hour ($ 30,000.00), and you'll see that it
just depends on your perspective.
This also points out that you may need to review your backup strategy.
You should at least have a backup tape somewhere with an old copy of the
source. If you do, you could use it to recover. You might have to figure
what recent changes were made and re-make them, but if you keep
documentation of program modifications that should be easy enough.
I recommend to my clients to make periodic backups of source libraries
separate from the regular backups (like every 3 months). Keep the last 3
generations of this backup before reusing the tapes. Once a year, make a
backup and keep it permanently. Then, if someone accidently deletes the
source for a program you should be able to find a copy of it on one of these
tapes, starting with the most recent (if not found on the regular backup
tapes).
Tapes are not cheap, but this type of backup strategy for your source is a
great insurance policy against these situations, compared to the cost of
having to retrieve the source from the objects...
JMHO
Steve Landess
V4R4 A7.3 cume9
EDI
(512) 423-0935
