Be careful when having a customized system: Table tcibd100 is becoming obsolete

I just wanted to have a look if Infor gave us a Christmas present and released Infor LN 10.5. The didn’t, but on the support site I stumbled upon the solutions 1673200 and 1672837, which were released December 23 and which seem to make table tcibd100 obsolete. That’s the “item inventory” table, which stores data on current stock level, planned stock, allocated stock and so on per item number. The solution text is pretty short:

“This solution contains all the Order Management components (TD package) which are changed to make sure table Item Inventory (tcibd100) is no longer used.”

So be careful: If this table isn’t used any longer by the standard software, this implies that after installation of these solutions the data in that table will not be updated any longer. I’m just presuming that, I didn’t analyze that any deeper. But I know that many Infor LN customers have addons or software modifications or external reporting in place, that make use of exactly this table. And I need to assume that these will no longer work after installing this solution. So that’s why I’m issueing this note: Please be careful when installing these solutions and check well beforehand, which side effects they have on existing customizations or reporting functionalities!

The modifications to the standard are obviously done for performance reasons (the table is one where lock contention may happen, slowing down the system). There is nothing to be said agains that. The table also makes some difficulties concerning table sharing in single logistic multi finance scenarions (rebuilding the inventory tables doesn’t work any longer if you share the table across financial companies), so personally I don’t mind if this table goes overboard.  But one has to check for the customizations and reports.

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[Update]: Jaap Doornenbal from Infor informed me in a comment below that they now have a knowledgebase entry available now clarifying the situation: https://www.inforxtreme.com/espublic/EN/AnswerLinkDotNet/SoHo/solutions/SoHoViewSolutionC.aspx?SolutionID=1675002.