On 10/08/99 10:59:26 you wrote:

In searching for a bug on NOW, I've noticed that a majority of bugs are still in the open state. Does this mean these bugs have not been fixed?

I always assumed open bugs were the ones that have not been fixed in a current release, yes. Note that NOW doesn't list all bugs, either, so there are probably a lot of bugs that are fixed that never make it on there. Customers probably want to know more about known bugs with workarounds than those without workarounds or have been fixed.

What does the 'release fix' column refer to? Does this mean the bug applies only to that specific release, or that the bug was fixed in that release, or that the bug was first noticed in that release?

I always thought it meant the bug is (believed to be) fixed in that release (and all future ones based from it).

Are bugs numbered in a strictly sequential order?

They used to be.

If so, how is it that bug #289 applies to release 5.3?

I'm not sure I understand the question. Are you surprised than a bug discovered years ago may have not yet been fixed? That's not unusual if the bug is rare or difficult to replicate, or requires some new features to resolve the problem.

It would be nice to see the bug tracking system be setup more clearly, perhaps with the following fields:

Date bug opened. Date bug closed. First release bug noticed. Releases which contain bug. First release which fixed bug. State: (opened, analyzed, solved, fix incorporated into release).

I thought NOW did contain that information (other than the dates), or was at least supposed to in the ideal world. Note it is a non-trivial problem to list all releases wich contain a bug, especially before the relevant code has been analyzed (which is generally very close to the time it would be fixed). So for an open bug, it is often going to be hard to trust that the bug isn't in your release as well, be it younger or older than the one in which the problem was first spotted.

I'd have to guess that the NOW bug system is not the same system used internally by NA engineers.

It used to be based of/integrated with it. Perhaps that has changed.

Bruce