I have been trying to do something with Flex that has so far been impossible, but perhaps someone out there has done it. I have a job set up as a deferred report, to run at 5 AM. It would be great if I could manipulate the start time programatically, so that the job would start when I wanted it to, remotely. Changing the Start time in DEFERRPT.BTR seems to have no effect. If anyone has found a way to do this, I would appreciate their insight.
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Using flex to kick off a deferred job
- Thread starter vbajock
- Start date
Is this report you are wanting to run a Crystal report or Macola canned report. If it is a crystal report, why do you not use the event system of your server side. If you are running W2K, then you have this ability.
Don Reeves
SCSI Business Solutions, LLC
Don Reeves
SCSI Business Solutions, LLC
- Thread starter
- #3
- Thread starter
- #5
MS merge, but this would apply to any deferred report. If I have a job running as a deferred report, I would like to change the time it is scheduled to run using a program running on a remote computer. I tried simply changing the time on the batch record in DEFRRPT.BTR, but apparently Macola loads this into RAM when you start the deferred processing, and it does not poll the DEFRRPT.BTR file to see if the time has changed.
I have used a product called Shortcut which simulates keystrokes. You can program it to actually go pick the Macola desktop shortcut of the MS merge. Have your VB program call the shortcut code. I have never tried scheduling with this tool however if you schedule your VB program, this should work.
We have used this program on a couple of occasions where there is no event available in Macola's VBA to do what we need to do.
I can send you an eval copy of this program if you are interested. Software Sales, Training and Support for Macola, Crystal Reports and Goldmine
dgilsdorf@mchsi.com
We have used this program on a couple of occasions where there is no event available in Macola's VBA to do what we need to do.
I can send you an eval copy of this program if you are interested. Software Sales, Training and Support for Macola, Crystal Reports and Goldmine
dgilsdorf@mchsi.com
- Thread starter
- #7
Ok, I am going to have to get on my soapbox, and since you have somehow been appointed on this forum to personally accept the weight (and sometimes some unpleasant ire) for Macola's sins, get ready :
I appreciate the suggestion, but I need something that can be triggered from a remote machine, and those products usually (you are welcome to surprise me) don't have those kinds of capabilities. I also shy away from keyboard-macro solutions because they don't stand up well to upgrades and changes on the host machine, and as a general rule, I, as a professional programmer, have a high level of robustness I want in my apps and keyboard robots just don't fit into, at least since MSDOS died.
Perhaps you can pass on to your Macola contacts that if they made a simple change to the Deferred reports processing program, they would give Flex programmers the ability to kick off jobs on a dedicated machine from a remote location. All they have do is modify the Deferred Reports Processing program in System Manager to react immediately to any remote change to the start time in it's own underlying data table, DEFRRPT.BTR. Now, if I change the time using VB instead of their interface, nothing happens.
Lets take this MS merge thing, which is only a component of an entire VB application I developed, as an example of why this so important. I have the merge set up on an dedicated NT 4 application server, and using a deferred report, I can get the merge to run automatically at 5:00 AM every day. But keep in mind that the Merge is one in a series of VB programs, both Flex and standalone, that meet a particular customers very special requirements for MRP and provide a great deal of automated functionality derived from a combination of Macola data and other data. In order to accomplish this, all these programs must execute in a proper order. So, I run my VB apps from the NT Job Scheduler, and, because Macola apps cannot be run from the NT Job Scheduler, I time the Macola apps using Deferred Reports, so they will run in the correct sequence. In other words, its a rig, but it works.
90% of the time, it works great. But say something happens - shipment arrives unexpectedly or a big inventory adjustment occurs, and they need to re-run this process so they can look at a new MRP right now. Ideally, I should be able to allow the remote user to click a single button somewhere on their desktop that will command this whole chain of events to run again on the Dedicated Machine, on demand. To do this, one of the programs in the chain could change the time in the DEFRRPT.BTR , and the Deferred Report currently running on the Dedicated Machine would be kicked off at the right sequence in the program chain. Instead, changing the time in this file has no affect because the Macola program is not polling the file for time changes. If you want a different start time, the user has to physically go to the machine and change it, or I am stuck with the alternative of giving the user some long drawn out instructions on when to run this job on server, then that on the desktop, etc. So the rig fails, and it fails because the rig was necessary, because of Macola.
If they fixed this, it would give VB developers the ability to dynamically schedule jobs by changing a single field in a single file. Dynamic scheduling (or its alternative, RPC) is something that has been around on most ERP systems since the 1970's, but has been totally MIA in Macola (MIA in ES?), which is why the Macola environent has been sticking its users with nasty 80's dinosaurs like Keyboard robots. It's whole nother century, guys!
It is in yours and Exact's best interest to do everything they can to increase the level of automation not only I but any programmer can offer to the factory floor, using Macola as a backbone, since it could increase yours and their sales. I sometimes think that Macola has been very insulated in their own little world and the design of the 7.x systems show that they think that all business solutions should emanate from their application, like the world is still running MSDOS. They have got to start realizing that the real name of the game these days is to make your product a piece of the software puzzle that indispensably fits with other pieces like XML, Active Data Objects, and all the other revolutionary stuff that Microsoft is coming out with now, and that there is a whole world of customers out there who don't want to have to do a jury rig everytime they need to get Macola's puzzle piece to fit. Everytime a jury rig is required supplies another reason the customer might buy someone else's product.
I appreciate the suggestion, but I need something that can be triggered from a remote machine, and those products usually (you are welcome to surprise me) don't have those kinds of capabilities. I also shy away from keyboard-macro solutions because they don't stand up well to upgrades and changes on the host machine, and as a general rule, I, as a professional programmer, have a high level of robustness I want in my apps and keyboard robots just don't fit into, at least since MSDOS died.
Perhaps you can pass on to your Macola contacts that if they made a simple change to the Deferred reports processing program, they would give Flex programmers the ability to kick off jobs on a dedicated machine from a remote location. All they have do is modify the Deferred Reports Processing program in System Manager to react immediately to any remote change to the start time in it's own underlying data table, DEFRRPT.BTR. Now, if I change the time using VB instead of their interface, nothing happens.
Lets take this MS merge thing, which is only a component of an entire VB application I developed, as an example of why this so important. I have the merge set up on an dedicated NT 4 application server, and using a deferred report, I can get the merge to run automatically at 5:00 AM every day. But keep in mind that the Merge is one in a series of VB programs, both Flex and standalone, that meet a particular customers very special requirements for MRP and provide a great deal of automated functionality derived from a combination of Macola data and other data. In order to accomplish this, all these programs must execute in a proper order. So, I run my VB apps from the NT Job Scheduler, and, because Macola apps cannot be run from the NT Job Scheduler, I time the Macola apps using Deferred Reports, so they will run in the correct sequence. In other words, its a rig, but it works.
90% of the time, it works great. But say something happens - shipment arrives unexpectedly or a big inventory adjustment occurs, and they need to re-run this process so they can look at a new MRP right now. Ideally, I should be able to allow the remote user to click a single button somewhere on their desktop that will command this whole chain of events to run again on the Dedicated Machine, on demand. To do this, one of the programs in the chain could change the time in the DEFRRPT.BTR , and the Deferred Report currently running on the Dedicated Machine would be kicked off at the right sequence in the program chain. Instead, changing the time in this file has no affect because the Macola program is not polling the file for time changes. If you want a different start time, the user has to physically go to the machine and change it, or I am stuck with the alternative of giving the user some long drawn out instructions on when to run this job on server, then that on the desktop, etc. So the rig fails, and it fails because the rig was necessary, because of Macola.
If they fixed this, it would give VB developers the ability to dynamically schedule jobs by changing a single field in a single file. Dynamic scheduling (or its alternative, RPC) is something that has been around on most ERP systems since the 1970's, but has been totally MIA in Macola (MIA in ES?), which is why the Macola environent has been sticking its users with nasty 80's dinosaurs like Keyboard robots. It's whole nother century, guys!
It is in yours and Exact's best interest to do everything they can to increase the level of automation not only I but any programmer can offer to the factory floor, using Macola as a backbone, since it could increase yours and their sales. I sometimes think that Macola has been very insulated in their own little world and the design of the 7.x systems show that they think that all business solutions should emanate from their application, like the world is still running MSDOS. They have got to start realizing that the real name of the game these days is to make your product a piece of the software puzzle that indispensably fits with other pieces like XML, Active Data Objects, and all the other revolutionary stuff that Microsoft is coming out with now, and that there is a whole world of customers out there who don't want to have to do a jury rig everytime they need to get Macola's puzzle piece to fit. Everytime a jury rig is required supplies another reason the customer might buy someone else's product.
Vbajock,
You are preaching to the choir. I had a long conversation about this today with another programmer. The Macola apps themselves should be available to VB and/or VBA, but they are not. You are corect in that my "solution" is not a very tidy one.
I have already complained to Exact, as have several others, about the limitations of what you can do with Flexibility, including most of the points in your last post.
Having said that, what else can I do except offer the best solution I can think of, even if it is messy? Software Sales, Training and Support for Macola, Crystal Reports and Goldmine
dgilsdorf@mchsi.com
You are preaching to the choir. I had a long conversation about this today with another programmer. The Macola apps themselves should be available to VB and/or VBA, but they are not. You are corect in that my "solution" is not a very tidy one.
I have already complained to Exact, as have several others, about the limitations of what you can do with Flexibility, including most of the points in your last post.
Having said that, what else can I do except offer the best solution I can think of, even if it is messy? Software Sales, Training and Support for Macola, Crystal Reports and Goldmine
dgilsdorf@mchsi.com
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