Paul’s Corner
A funny
thing happened at my first performance review at DataWorks in 1987. Frank
Busalacchi called me in, we chatted for a minute, and he went over a couple of
things. He then looked me in the eye and said he had a customer call to
complain about me. I was kind of shocked! I had been getting lots of problems
called in, some I solved quickly, some took a little longer, and others were
handed to the Account Reps. Frank then told me that the customer said that I
seemed overly happy when they reported their system problem. He said he knew I
enjoyed my job, but that I should try not to be so gleeful when the customers
were having a problem. Well, how am I doing on this issue? If you’ve talked to
me over the last 16 years, I’d say you would still have to give me a ‘Failing’
mark on the happiness front. Why, I guess I’m just one of those people who
really likes what they do and cannot hide that fact! Oh
well, better happy than stinky!
Now,
who is coming to Perspectives? Kore Technologies will be well represented. Ken
Dickinson, Mark Dobransky, Frank Kertai, Frank Busalacchi, and I will be
manning our booth. Please stop by, we would really like to meet you.
We will
be highlighting our Web Team product. We think WebTeam is very exciting –
software that we use internally every day, all day. Everyone who has access to
the Web can use WebTeam. Our customers who are working on big projects with
Kore have access to our WebTeam where they can see their Project and all of the
Tasks, Issues, Notes, and Attachments. They are notified by email of changes in
the project (new, updated, closed tasks and issues). Maybe you can ask Frank B.
how much for WebTeam and then go to Frank K., tell him you can get roughly the
same package for $$$ (the price Frank B. quotes you), and then ask if he can
beat that price?
Has
everyone started taking advantage of the DataFlo “Archive to History”
enhancement in the 5.7 release? In Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Sales
Order, and Inventory the ability to purge data is still there, and the ability
to Archive to History has been added. What a great enhancement! Now, you can
set up your current data files for optimum speed and still have history right
at your fingertips. Be careful to make sure your history files are of the
appropriate size for the amount of data you will be putting into them: we’ve
all run into problems where reading and writing data to a file that is far too
small causes a program to run for an incredibly long time; “40 days and 40
nights” comes to mind. (Kore has a cool tool to help – call me about it if you
would like to know more.)
Programmers,
before we leave the HIST files, did you know you can create Preview Indexes on
those Historical files? When creating the index, simply enter the filename in
this format: DICTNAME,DATANAME like AR,HIST or
CASH,HIST. Everything else will be the same. When the Purge routine uses PV.WRITE to create
the record in the History file, Preview will update the index(es) for that historical file. What would you use this index
for? One thought would be an Inquiry screen and another thought is for
selecting the data for reporting. If you have Kore’s TurboSelect,
you already know it uses indexes to select data – incredibly fast on large
files when compared to the SELECT command. (Click here to learn more about TurboSelect.)
Oops, there I am advertising a great product when I could be offering to assist
with fun stuff like writing reports that will pluck data from the current file,
the historical file, or both – Just give me a call 858/678-0030, 6am to 3pm
Pacific Time.
Please
remember, “Great Service to your Customer is always rewarded”.
Paul’s Questions and Answers
My
Paul’s Corner seems to have generated a few questions which I am happy to
answer. I want to thank those of you who have had questions for me. I’ve tried
to answer them as I receive them and then report those questions and answers in
the next Newsletter. If it weren’t for questions would we ever learn anything? Everyone,
please email your questions to me and I’ll try to answer them.
This
month there are questions regarding NSELECT and Preview screens and reassembly messages.
Question: Thanks
for your tips on QSELECT, now can you give a clear explanation of NSELECT?
Answer: The
NSELECT Info/Access command creates a list of Item-IDs that do not exist in the
current file. You need an active select-list prior to the NSELECT command. For
example, if we have A-FILE and B-FILE. We wish to create a list of item-IDs
that exist in the A-FILE but not in B-FILE. So, first you create a list of
item-IDs that do exist in A-FILE and then use the NSELECT verb to create a list
of item-IDs that do not exist in B-FILE. For our example, the TCL statements
would be:
>SELECT A-FILE
>NSELECT B-FILE
Now our current Active
Select List is Item-IDs that do exist in A-FILE but do not exist in B-FILE.
Here is another example: Are there any Bill of Materials items that do
not have a corresponding Parts record? In this example, there is 1 BOM item-ID
that did not have a corresponding PARTS item-ID. Here are the steps I used to
find the item-ID that does exist in the BOM file but does not exist in the
PARTS file.
>SELECT
BOM
55 record(s) selected to SELECT list #0.
>>NSELECT
PARTS
1 record(s) selected to SELECT list #0.
>>ED
PARTS
Selected record name = "JUNK".
New record.
----: EX
Question: When modifying a screen and then
copying it to live, I do not like the users to see the "Compiling Preview
Code". What's the quick way to recompile those screens?
Answer: I also don't like the screen
returning messages that it could not find a search, or
something that is no real problem as it really means the module for that search
is not installed.
1. Wait
until users are off system (or at lunch) to release SCN's
to live (with screen changes).
2. Release
the SCN.
3. Then,
depending on the SCN, one of the following will apply:
a. If you changed just a Screen item (not any
elements), simply logon to the live accounts and go into that screen and it
will automatically recompile for you.
b. If you changed an element, the Release SCN’s process will reset (i.e., recompile on entry)
all screens related to the file containing the element you changed. Thus, you
will need to logon to the each live account, go to TCL, and recompile the
screens both Baseline and Custom. I'll use AR-INVOICE screens as an
example:
SELECT STAT-SCREENS = "AR-INVOICE*]"
SETUP.SCREENS
Source file: STAT-SCREENS
Recompile: Y
SELECT DW-SCREENS = "AR-INVOICE*]"
SETUP.SCREENS
Source file: DW-SCREENS
Recompile: Y
Question: What version of wIntegrate do you
need to add a pull down menu for Queries? I have 3.0 and don't have a 'toolbars
tab' choice under 'preferences'.
Answer: Oops, I should have listed the wIntegrate release as
4.2 (wIntegrate98) in my Tech Tip last month on adding a Query Builder menu to
the Menu Bar. I did some research in the 3.0.11 wIntegrate release, which does
not have that nice tab in the Preferences. It looks like the best way to have a
“Query” menu would be to add a new Query button to the tool bar. After digging
a little, it looks like you would have to create a new bit map for the button,
a script that would execute a ‘popup’ menu window with the Saved Queries as
choices, and create a script to execute the chosen Query. This is all within
the realm of a fun project to do, but then where do you store those new items
you created? Do you put them in the DW Utilities folder, or in the wIntegrate
Folder? What if you upgrade wIntegrate and/or the DW Utilities? If you have 99
users, that’s 99 times you’ll have to find/fix/reload/re-hookup your custom
changes. I’m not so sure it’s worth that when you can simply upgrade wIntegrate
to the current release.
I was talking to Tony Gardner
about some Kore software he was interested in and bounced this 3.0 Query
Builder question off of him and he quickly replied “Upgrade wIntegrate”.
