RE: Screen Scraping ?

Booth,

Not a bad idea, perhaps involving a database trigger, but by that time
the address is already in the database, and the entry rep has moved on
to another call and doesn't have the customer there to verify the
address again.  

Also, I tend to shy away from the "try it and don't accept it if it
doesn't work" method because valid email addresses will often fail if a
server is temporarily down somewhere or tcp/ip communications are
interrupted, etc.

I should mention, I'm not really looking to open a big discussion on how
to handle bad emails.  That horse has been whipped plenty here in the
past I think.  

What I'm really looking for here is a general thumbs up or down on this
"screen scraping" notion.  My Director thinks it ought to be fairly
easy, and I'm inclined to think that it would be extremely complicated
and not worth the effort.  

Thanks

Greg

|-----Original Message-----
|From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:midrange-l-
|bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Booth Martin
|Sent: Thursday, November 09, 2006 12:03 PM
|To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
|Subject: Re: Screen Scraping ?
|
|Could you consider sending an introductory e-mail immediately, from the
|iSeries?  If it fails, you know you have a bad one?
|
|Fleming, Greg (ED) wrote:
|> We have an issue with sales reps entering invalid email addresses
into
|> our database (forgetting the ".com", missing "@" sign, etc.).  When
we
|> send emails from the iSeries, we filter these out.  But we would like
to
|> prevent them going in wrong in the first place, preferably by
alerting
|> the rep at the point of entry so they can enter a correct address
|> instead.
|>
|> Since we are using 3rd party software, we don't have control over the
|> code, so our IT Director has suggested "screen scraping" as a
possible
|> solution. I did some Googling and poked around in the Midrange
archives
|> a bit, but I'm not sure that screen scraping will do what we're
looking
|> for.
|>
|> Is it possible to write a PC application that can intercept entries
|> being made into a 5250 emulator intelligently enough to be able to
edit
|> the input and interrupt the transmission to the iSeries if there is
an
|> error ?  If there were, wouldn't this involve "web-facing" the entire
|> green screen application ?
|>
|> Thoughts ?
|>
|>
|>
|> Greg Fleming
|>
|> Senior Programmer/Analyst
|>
|> Everglades Direct, Inc.
|>
|>
|>
|
|--
|---------------------------------
|Booth Martin
|http://www.Martinvt.com
|---------------------------------
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