RE: How to grant limited access to BPCS user? Query/400 -- BPCS-L

Khalid,

Some Windows based tools such as Showcase Strategy, Cognos, and even Seagate
Info (AKA Crystal Reports) offer features you are looking for. With these
tools, a programmer or power-user with security access can define Data
Dictionaries (terms vary between products but the concept is the same) that
provide access to the right tables and fields, performing the joins between
the tables. The dictionaries are secured by user. The tools are WYSIWYG,
GUI, drag and drop, OLE, and lots of other Windowzy buzz words, so you look
really trendy and cool deploying them. Most of them allow for the output to
be directed straight to Excel, Word, HTML, and many other file formats. I
recommend that you choose one which links to a query engine that runs on the
400 rather than using ODBC. The 400 chokes on ODBC requests off large
tables.

Success with these tools depends on having only people who know what they
are doing setup the dictionaries, document the scope of what the data in the
dictionary can provide, then setup access so that users can access only the
dictionaries to which they are authorized. Don't just turn everyone loose on
writing reports from scratch. Do as much work in the dictionary as possible.
Try to do the tricky logic for them. In an ideal world users would then need
only deal with report layout, filters, grouping, sorting, publishing, and
distribution.

Here are some links:
http://www.seagatesoftware.com/homepage/
http://www.cognos.com/impromptu/index.html
http://www.showcasecorp.com/strategy/strategy.html


Regarging account inquiries, according to the 6.1 net change doc, a feature
new to 6.1 "allows security to be set for Events Processing and the INQUIRY
APPLICATIONS. It prevents you from posting to an account for which you do
not have access and/or prevents you from VIEWING BALANCES of those accounts"
(emphasis added). The idea is that you revoke a user's ability to view
account balances, then selectively grant view access to the ones you want
the user to see. With this feature, one account query that shows your actual
and budget book balances for your expense accounts could generate different
results for different budget managers without having to fiddle with report
parameters. This is a form of inquiry security built right into BPCS and can
really cut down on the number of reports you need to write. For all you
multitudes of folks running 6.1...

Good luck with whatever you choose.

Geo.

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