To my knowledge, FP7a has some additional fixes for security problems
discovered in the original FP7 - everything else should be the same.

When IBM discovers a security hole, a top priority is made to address
the problem in all available fixpaks that are identified as containing
it. An example of a problem that would require a security fix would be
a stack overwrites that potentially allowed a user to input malicious
code directly into the executable area. In such cases, the
corresponding fixpaks are pulled and a replacement fixpak with the "a"
suffix is substituted.

No additional functionality beyond addressing the security concern is
added to the "a" fixpaks.

Burkhard Schultheis wrote:
> What fixpak should we use fro a production machine? FP7 or FP7a? What's
> the difference?
>
> Regards,