p_file_20: "Login record belongs to other patron"; last-bor-id prefix

• Article Type: General
• Product: Aleph
• Product Version: 18.01

Description:
I am trying to load new patron files. Most of the patrons load correctly as updates, but none of the inserts work.

In the abc50 $data_scratch/p_file_20_report we see the following error:

Cannot update/delete record. Login record belongs to other patron.

And in the $alephe_scratch/abc50_p_file_20 log we see:

Error (b_file_20_chk_edit_record) :
Record No 000004
z308-rec-key belongs to other user (00ABC-00000683 )

The abc50 util g/2 shows:

last-bor-id 6835 n S ABC-

Why would it be trying to assign key of "ABC-00000683" if last-bor-id is 6835.

Resolution:
The program is getting the last-bor-id prefix ("ABC-") and adding the 9-digit sequence # to it. This length is 4 + 9 = 13, while the z303_rec_key / the user ID is only 12 bytes.

Thus, when the system gets a sequence 000006835, it is truncated to ABC-00000683. Since there is already an ABC-00000683 key, it is flagged as a duplicate.

There are two options:

1. Change the last-bor-id prefix to 3 characters (or fewer), such as, "AB-" or "ABC" (with no hyphen).

2. Change the suppress (column 3) from "n" to "y". (This means that the sequence 6835 will result in an ID of ABC-6835 -- no leading zeros.)

See also KB 16384-23249.