Re: Automated Unattended Convert spoolfile to Excel and emailed as an attachement

I've actually suggested in the past that if user want an excel report is to
make them one from the DATA, not a spooled file.

You have a program or query that creates the spooled file. It shouldn't be
too difficult to have it also create the tables needed to create excel
files from.

Yes, I understand the source isn't always available, but in the cases that
it is, it's most likely your best bet and in the time it took to research
all the different utilities for it you'd be done.

Brad
www.bvstools.com

On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 4:17 PM, Buck Calabro <kc2hiz@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 2/11/2015 4:57 PM, Steinmetz, Paul wrote:

I need an automated, unattended process that will convert an AS/400

spoolfile to Excel, strip headings, maybe some custom cells, and email as
an attachment.

I've researched this before, never came up with a final solution.
We currently use IBM Info Print Server to auto email 100% of our

spoolfiles/reports.

Two issues.
1) Info Print Server does not have an Excel option
2) The PDF that is emailed cannot be imported into Excel.
Back on the priority list.

Some of the solutions are for PF only, may not handle spoolfiles.

So the big issue with parsing spooled files is that they are not
consistently formatted from record to record. There are headings,
footers, totals, extra space after groupings and so on. There's not
going to be a generic widget that inherently understands the difference
between a detail line and a total line, although it might be possible to
understand the difference between a header and a detail line.

Coming to the point, decades ago, I used a product called Monarch. It
runs on the PC. You provide a template and it uses that template to
suss out what the detail lines are and extract them to a spreadsheet.
It turns out that Datawatch (the makers of Monarch) are still in
business, and their successor product seems like it might be able to
extract a spreadsheet from a report (among its many other bells and
whistles.) http://www.datawatch.com/products/datawatch-modeler/

I last used this more than 25 years ago so I know exactly zero about the
current capabilities. They have a free trial - what's to lose?

The reason I don't use a product like that is because we don't have any
3rd party software where I want to extract data from a report. If
someone wants an in-house report as a spreadsheet, I've been using Scott
Klement's POI wrappers. I've dabbled with Python for my own ad hoc work
and it's quite nice. Haven't tried to lever it into production yet for
fear of my colleagues lynching me for Yet Another Thing To Learn And
Maintain.

--
--buck

'I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion' - Jack Kerouac
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