My department got into the use of the technology to write directly to
Excel from RPG ILE programs in a big way over the last year, with
outstanding results. We had a very enthusiastic programmer on our staff
who wrote a lot of foundation procedures to automate the background
tasks which are necessary in this technology. Thus it became very easy
to adopt this technology when called for in a given application. Under
this methodology the most time-consuming task is now the design of the
spreadsheet; the programming part is almost trivial. The amount of
control it offers is truly mind-boggling. I recently had to design an
application to automate the creation of the "U.S. Customs Invoice" which
our Canadian branches need when they ship to the United States. The
appearance of the final document rivals what a professional printshop
can achieve. One caveat--it is considerably slower than normal
printing, so you wouldn't want to use this for simple tabular reports
with thousands of detail lines. But for complex analytical reports, or
for applications in which you are trying to create legal documents (like
customs documents) which have many different sections of varying font
sizes and complex grid patterns, it is hard to beat.
Best regards,
Bob Hermann, CertainTeed Corporation Insulation Group
-----Original Message-----
From: bpcs-l-bounces+robert.g.hermann=saint-gobain.com@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:bpcs-l-bounces+robert.g.hermann=saint-gobain.com@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of rob@xxxxxxxxx
Sent: Thursday, July 30, 2009 8:36 AM
To: BPCS ERP System
Subject: Re: [BPCS-L] Connecting Excel to BPCS
Our systems analysts might argue that the best way to get data from BPCS
is to use their standard reports. They've had too many cases where
people accessed data via Query, Excel, etc and almost made bad business
decisions based on wrong data.
But if you truly want to download then there is a way to control that
but still give nice downloads - especially if it's done on a repetitive
basis.
Your development staff can write programs that write directly to an
Excel file and then either post a link to it on your internal website,
or attach the spreadsheet itself to an email and distribute it. You can
roll your own like this:
http://faq.midrange.com/data/cache/533.html
See also
http://faq.midrange.com/data/cache/639.html
If the excel user wants direct access to the data then I suggest using
either an SQL "view" or a DDS "join logical file". Instead of the user
having to know to "join this file to that file and do this and that"
they can simply access the view. The view can also rename the fields
from iclas to ItemClass and lots of other stuff.
See also:
http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/i/software/access/windows/database.html
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/iseries/v6r1m0/topic/rzahg/rzah
gicia.htm
Rob Berendt
--
Group Dekko Services, LLC
Dept 01.073
Dock 108
6928N 400E
Kendallville, IN 46755
http://www.dekko.com
From:
"Aaron Brown" <Aaron.Brown@xxxxxxxxxx>
To:
<bpcs-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date:
07/29/2009 05:25 PM
Subject:
[BPCS-L] Connecting Excel to BPCS
Sent by:
bpcs-l-bounces+rob=dekko.com@xxxxxxxxxxxx
What is the best way to retrieve data from BPCS? I am completely new to
BPCS, and we have version 5.5. Can you connect via Excel, or do you
need other addins and/or SQL to get at the data? Any information would
be appreciated!
Thank you,
Aaron Brown
midrange.com
