Integrate with Customized Macola

[dwilliamsonivsi]

We are an Integrator and have an interface to our WMS that imports Customers, Vendors, Carriers, Categories, Buyers, Items, POs, and Orders and exports updates to PO, OE, and IM. It does this for Macola 7.5.103F, 7.6.100a, and 7.6.200.

Now we have a customer who has customized Macola libraries (i.e. Macola has coded special libraries for them).

Keep in mind that the Macola EDI will not do all that we need it to do and it does not do it fast enough. So the EDI mechanism is out.

We have already begun development on a Macola screen scraping client to address this custom Macola installation; however, I would really like to avoid screen scraping. I have heard (and see in the registry) that there are underlying Macola objects (COM or otherwise) that might do the work.

Does anyone know if the Macola GUI is truely dumb and the underlying components do all the work and data checks?

Does anyone know if there is a layer under the GUI that can be used to post transactions against Macola knowing that there are customized Macola libraries that must be called as if an operator were working the GUI?

 

[MacolaHelp]

Quite honestly, you are far beyond the scope of a forum like this. You'll need to find out what exactly the custom lbrs are designed to do & how they change the vanilla macola program behavior. In some cases, vendors who have written customizations have modified the ddfs to use filler in the basic file structure. Macola does sell source code for v7x & they used to offer developer training, but I am unsure if they still do. They are going more to the VBA approach in later 7x versions & I'm still not clear on what they have ultimately decided for ES. Either way, though, you'll need to replicate all the table updates done by a vanilla macola or vanilla+custom library GUI. No small task.

 

[dwilliamsonivsi]

Well thanks for taking the time to post anyway. Maybe one day the web objects will be become the macola objects that we need them to be.

Thanks.

 

[stravis]

Macola does not provide the business objects that you are looking for. The Macola user interface contains all of the business logic that is needed to validate and write back to the Macola database. Macola does have some objects, such as the Web Objects you mentioned for some applications, however all of the business objects I have seen have not been written to be used for general use, but rather for a specific purpose.

MacolaHelp is correct in saying that you will need to reverse engineer and code all of the logic yourself. I would suggest working with a Macola business partner that has a strong development staff, so that you can tap in to there specialized knowledge.

As an alternative, and I know you are not in the position to suggest this, it might be better if the client with the modified version of Macola were to move away from source code changes and reinvent their customizations through VBA, SQL Triggers, and Stand Alone Applications added to the Macola menu structure. I have never yet encountered a customization done for Macola in source code that could not be replicated using less intrusive methods.

Regards,
Scott Travis
infoSpring, LLC.

 

[dwilliamsonivsi]

Thanks for the post Stravis. We are mentioning standard Macola with every breath. Maybe just maybe it will ring the right tone one day.

Thanks for the taking the time to post.