Re: Excel Macro doing mass Input via GreenScreen

On 4/30/2013 9:24 AM, John Yeung wrote:

On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 6:34 AM, <paultherrien@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

What is the concern exactly? Is the green screen application not editing
the data correctly?

Obviously I don't know the OP's exact situation, but I am imagining
what a macro that loads Excel data into interactive green screens
would look like, and what *my* concern would be is that if the green
screen app wasn't specifically designed for bulk upload, then if the
app *does* edit the data correctly by displaying some kind of error
message in the *middle* of the execution of the macro, that the macro
wouldn't know how to deal with it and it would just keep going, and
possibly munge things up. (For example, part of the Excel data might
turn into a response for the error message dialog, which by chance
clears the dialog, and then the rest of the data goes into the wrong
places, and the original error may or may not have been answered
appropriately.)

In other words, it just seems likely an inordinately high risk of
train wreck to me, given the information OP has provided so far. My
assessment could definitely change once he provides more details.

Incidentally, if the green screen app is *not* really designed for
human interactive use, but is actually just a receptacle for the Excel
data, then there's less chance of train wreck, but to me there are
still better ways of getting that Excel data. Just upload the Excel
file to the i (can be made to be a single-click for the end-user) and
then read the Excel file directly on the i. Rob and others will
happily point to RPG and Java solutions; I will of course push Python.

Well said. My own applications throw an error message and disallow the
'update' function key until the errors were corrected. That would seem
to be standard practice, but I can see that others might follow a
different path.

As far as disabling the Excel macro goes, perhaps that's an answer, but
won't the end user simply type the data by hand instead? Sounds more
error prone and definitely more time consuming to me. If I had an end
user doing this I would do everything in my power to make the process
easier for her. Of course, my time is finite, and I might be doing
something the organisation thinks is more important at this moment, but
still, I would want to reward a thinker who is also a doer.
--buck