RE: Help Systems' email about AFP support discontinued at 7.3 - not true ! - or is it ?

Brad - is correct - this is VERY common. Certainly has been done everywhere I have worked.

And to argue the other point of view - a spool file is a snapshot of data *at a point in time*. For an accountant it may be the General Ledger at the close of the month. They don't want to see the data as it is *now*; the want it from the report.

And by using products like Brad's they get their data immediately without having to ask IT to program a file extract, or by doing it themselves using something like Query or ODBC (which for many users is beyond their ability/comfort level) (especially if the data comes from multiples files that have to be joined together).

Scott

-----Original Message-----
From: MIDRANGE-L [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Bradley Stone
Sent: Friday, December 09, 2016 4:08 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: Help Systems' email about AFP support discontinued at 7.3 - not true ! - or is it ?

I don't think you're missing anything, Nathan. I've said the same thing
for over 20 years.

Customers want spooled files converted to excel, csv or some other data
format. That's like taking a photograph of your daughter and asking it
what she had for supper. There's no "data", just a picture of the data.
Spooled files I feel are the same... a snapshot of your data, not actual
data.

But, trust me, using spooled files as "data" is used a VERY often in our
world, even though creating a PF from a query or program to get real data
isn't too difficult.

Yes, my SPLTOOL product will create a column delimited file that can be
imported to excel (stripping out headers as long as they're on the same
lines on each page). But most of the time I also suggest that they try
creating a PF instead and copying that to an ISV file.

Brad
www.bvstools.com

On Fri, Dec 9, 2016 at 3:10 PM, Nathan Andelin <nandelin@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

The "forms" metaphor in this case seems a bit counter intuitive, to me at
least. Forms in my mind are pre-printed documents which contain input
elements which one fills out manually and hands back to whoever is seeking
your input. Think filling our a drivers licence application and handing it
back to a clerk.

It sounds like iForms is a WYSIWYG report designer and generator which can
import data from multiple types of data sources. I've never understood why
people felt that spool files were good "data sources".

I must be missing something..., probably out of touch.