Re: download of spooled files -- BPCS-L

I did not see this come back to me from BPCS_L which could have been a 
problem with AOL or my PC ... I have had a couple of power blips in the 
middle of e-mail sessions & been unable to figure out if I lost anything.

Subj:   Re: download of spooled files
Date:   10/27/99
To: BPCS-L@midrange.com

>From Al Macintyre

> From: Andreas.KOPP@de.imp-group.com
>  
>  In several cases people need to work with data in spooled files using
>  Excel, Access or other tools.

At Central Industries, we have been using an old version of Monarch from Data 
Watch 800-445-3311

This illustrates a problem with many of the directories of 400 products ... 
we remember these tools by the name of the product, but the directories are 
organized by the name of the vendor & sometimes the vendors combine & 
transfer names ... there needs to be better ability to look up by name of 
product.

 .. you have to be on a PC connected to AS/400 & able to bring up your 
spooled report on screen ... ie. have authorized access to the reports you 
created.  Point & click at the entry in spool file & Monarch copies it into 
your PC where you can slice & dice what you want out of report & the data is 
into any PC spread sheet, graphics package, or other PC application of your 
heart's desire.  There's an add-on that plugs into the internet.

However, we may need to move to some competitor of Monarch.  What we want to 
work towards is a report to be run as part of the Billing cycle - for 
selected customers that request this service ... here is a report of 
everything that we shipped you today & it might be a null story ... then that 
report ends up as e-mail attachments by customer - in some cases more than 
one person at the customer wants a copy & we want the PC connection to spool 
software to be doing this automatically ... basically without some human 
having to do anything more than the option to DO IT because the billing is at 
that step.

We are also discussing adding something to our web site ... customer rep 
clicks on a private area & identifies customer / password just for that 
customer ... then gets to see a list of what parts we shipped on which day in 
say the last 2 weeks & depending on volume of parts we make for them, they 
could look at a history of a particular part, or what shipments to which of 
their divisions on a particular day.  Our idea is not to have the customer 
dial all the way into BPCS 405 Menu of options tailored to that customer, but 
rather have our data that is relevant to that customer refresh the web site 
each day around billing time.

What you are asking for is a common desire starting point in getting AS/400 
data into PC tools - there are 20-50 companies that make products serviing 
the market of AS/400 spool to PC products & e-commerce.  Many of the trade 
publications have periodic reviews of such products & you could probably find 
a lot of leads by checking out such URLs as
http://news400.com/
http://www.products400.com
http://www.midrangecomputing.com/scripts/webboard.dll/mainmenu
http://www.datamation.com/discussions/index.html


ashttp://news400.com/http://www.products400.comhttp://www.midrangecomputing.com/scripts/webboard.dll/mainmenuhttp://www.datamation.com/discussions/index.htmlhttp://discussions.earthweb.com/cgi-bin/dnewsweb?cmd=article&group=earthweb.appdev.general&item=10&utag=

AS/400 Magazine July 1999 had a comparison of specific features of many of 
these companies ... the specific offerings vary ... browse 400 spool reports 
Windows style or Internet style ... slice & dice 400 report data columns to 
extract only part of a larger report ... transmit 400 report into an e-mail 
attachment ... graph from 400 report data irrespective of other PC tools ... 
convert 400 data into format of diversity of PC products ... take it all the 
way to HTML or some other web, with convenient break points so end user not 
have infinite scrolling ... pricing flat or based on number of PC seats ... 
twinax supported ... e-mail from twinax dumb terminal

News/400 & Midrange Computing dot com also have forums for people who have 
specific products doing this kind of thing talking about their challenges 
figuring out how to implement specific details.

>  Our users do not have access to AS/400 commands and so they don't have any
>  possibility to download these files.

Even when security policy does not grant users command line authority, stuff 
can be embedded in CL on BPCS Menus to give people very narrow access such as 
specifically to reports that they created, or is your scenario people who 
have PCs but are not involved in BPCS/400 ... they need access to a report 
that someone else created?

>  We are still looking for a powerful and user friendly PC-based tool to
>  enable them to download spooled files.
>  It should be a program to run under Windows 95 and there should be no
>  installations on the AS/400.
>  
>  Is there any tool known?
>  
>  Andreas Kopp
>  Impress Metal Packaging

For other sources of PC products serving transfer of Spool File/400 to PC & 
the great e-beyond, check out

www.adobe.com
www.bavarian-cons.com ... any spool/400 to CD-Rom
www.bcdsoftware.com ... EZ-Pickin's
www.datajunction.com ... Cambio
www.gumbo.com 206-284-5078
www.helpsystems.com 800-328-1000 ... check out Robot/Reports
www.ironside.com ... specific BPCS but it might only be V6
LANSA for the Web
www.madec.com
www.magsoft.com
mv.metafile.com
realvisionsoftware.com
www.seagullsw.com
www.bystools.com ... shareware approach
www.taligentgroup.com
www.vansystems.com

I know of more but those are the only ones I had handy when replying to this 
e-mail ... check out the features & pick what seems closest to your needs ... 
some of these outfits offer demos ... that's how we got Monarch ... try it & 
decide if you like it.

URLs of various BPCS consultants who regularly post constructive information 
on BPCS_L ... we used Crowe Chizek in our Y2K conversion of BPCS ... all 
those consultants are using portable PCs that dial into their home office 
that dials into our AS/400 & runs APPC over ECS such that 12 different 
consultants in 12 different cities can be signed onto BPCS/400 at the same 
time over the same ECS line ... those consultants have figured out some 
really sophisticated stuff.  On the end PC they have point & click capability 
... anything a PC can view it can copy.

Al Macintyre
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