Re: This sounds more like the real story...
Of everything that I have read so far, this seems to be by far the most plausible explanation. Combination of upgrade not working and then the decision to roll back causing a serious error.
From (admittedly back in the 90's) experience, you can recover if you lose the CA7 data. But only if you have a bunch of guys in the computer room who have worked on those batch schedules for years and know them off by heart. You can't simply re-create without them. However, they are generally the first in the chopping line as on a resourcing spreadsheet you simply see very expensive resources doing something that the management consultant doesn't understand.
Again from experience of working in IT in retail banks, the business / management neither understand nor respect IT. As such they are dealt a crap hand every budgetary cycle and simply have to make do. Until the business understand that they are dead in the water without IT and start giving it the money it requires then this event is going to be repeated over and over again.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
