DEC VMS Legacy Data to Great Plains

[flyrodder]

I work for a manufacturing firm that has legacy software for their sales orders on an older DEC VMS system. Currently our accounting department is manually putting the sales entries into Great Plains in a networked environment. The Great Plains data is SQL based. I have been assigned the task of bringing our sales transactions from the DEC VMS system to SQL in batch processing. The problem is I have only worked on the DEC VMS system and have no idea of where to start on this project. If anyone out there could give me some ideas of where to look on how to integrate these two systems I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks.

 

[jymm]

I am assuming that this is a one time shot of the old data with this response.

Have you explored Integration Manager? It might be the fastest route to get the info over.

You would
1) import the DEC info via CSV into a new DB (just to make it is clean so you can get rid of it later)
2) use Integration Manager to port the info into GP.

this way you do not need to rely on us to tell you to put info into this field or that table... Integration Manager would know all that...

This help?

 

[flyrodder]

Thanks for the reply. I will look at Integration Manager and see what is needed to do this. However this is not a one time shot. The current sales programs are located on the DEC and will remain there. So this will be an ongoing thing.

 

[jymm]

well then the process is similar

On going you would somehow export the info from the DEC to a file (or directly into SQL via FTP or XML - seems that should be easy enough to do depending on VMS structure --- or what I remember from my DEC days) - and run Intergration manager. I know of GP users that do similar things on a scheduled basis (so not a real time load). Then clear/delete the temp table (so that if there were no transactions they would not reload)... or similar you could mark them as loaded with some SQL...

this make sense?

Hardest part will be keeping customers & items in sync since you will need to do that too (maybe use one of the user definable fields in GP to have the DEC customer number or similar?)

 

[flyrodder]

Once again. Thanks. You have been most helpfull. I now have a direction to go in. All I have do do now if figure out what fields info to move and how to mark as processed.

Thanks.

 

[jazgeek]

Take a look at e-connnect, it might be more useful for you.

-----------
and they wonder why they call it Great Pains!

jaz

 

[flyrodder]

Thanks. I will also look at e-connect to see what it offers. You have both been very helpful.

 

[jymm]

btw - I should have mentioned that I take info from MS CRM and have it going back and forth from Great Pains using a product called Scribe. It was not too bad of an option, so if you are looking at CRM stuff - I would look at this option as well.

 

[flyrodder]

I'm not familiar with MS CRM but I will look into it. I'm open to any and all paths to the end result. Thanks.