Recent News and Tips
Windows offers a way to quickly open a file from an application. Assuming
you can see the file and the application, you can use one of three
methods:
Drop on Desktop Icon,
Drop on Qedit Application Window, or
Drop on Taskbar Button. All three of these work in Qedit for Windows.
For full instructions and more Windows Tips, visit the permanent location of this article.
1/31/2001
Recently, as a result of our articles
on checking email addresses,
Hans Hendriks in Robelle Tech Support received an inquiry from
Kurt Sager of SWS
(kurt.sager@sws.ch), the Robelle distributor in
Switzerland, asking how to verify a large
number of web addresses automatically:
In some databases we have many Internet URL's, mostly
links to home pages, or an html page inside a web site.
It happens that such addresses contains typing errors, or the
web site disappears ... we all know the problem!
We can easily and automatically create a flat file,
say once a month,containing one URL per line,
possibly many many thousands lines.
We need a utility to check the validity of all the addresses,
possibly write a new file with the invalid adresses for
other actions to take.
To find out Hans' solution, read the full article.
1/30/2001
We continue to build our directory of consultants who are knowledgeable
in Suprtool. This time it is Fluent Edge, creators of MICE, the COBOL to
Suprtool Define generator. Our growing directory.
|
Company Name: |
Fluent Edge Technologies Inc. |
|---|
| Speciality: | Custom solutions for HP 3000 users, with emphasis on SGA's MACS systems. |
|---|
| Description: | Suprtool and Qedit for Windows experience. |
|---|
| Contact: | Tom Clarke |
|---|
| Email: | tom@fluentedge.com |
|---|
| Contact: | Cliff Looyenga |
|---|
| Email: | cliff@fluentedge.com |
|---|
| Location: | Coeur d'Alene, ID |
|---|
| Phone: | 208.765.2900 |
|---|
| Fax: | 801.740.8291 |
|---|
| Web site: | fluentedge.com |
|---|
| Links: | COBOL to Suprtool Generator |
|---|
| Notes: |
Fluent Edge Tech provides MACS internals training as well as Suprtool classes. These are normally conducted on-site.
|
|---|
1/28/2001
VISIMAGE is a visual report writer for the e3000, marketed by VitalSoft.
Users have been using Suprtool extract files with VISIMAGE for years. Files built by Suprtool are exactly like VISIMAGE self-describing files. Since Suprtool is faster on single dataset extracts, it makes sense to use Suprtool as a first pass in a VISIMAGE multiple pass Report. Suprtool can dramatically improve the overall performance of your reports, particularly on large datasets that contain millions of records.
However, in the past, it has been somewhat tedious to integrate the Suprtool extract with the VISIMAGE report. It was necessary to create the Suprtool extract file first and then manually open that file in VISIMAGE. The new version of VISIMAGE brings a level of integration that is unmatched in previous releases. All of the above problems have been eliminated. It is now possible to enter Suprtool commands in the VISIMAGE List Designer – Selection Criteria Window. When the List is executed, VISIMAGE calls Suprtool and passes it all of the commands.
For more information, read the Vitalsoft announcement.
1/26/2001
Ole Nord (ole@OleNordAB.se), Robelle's
representative in Scandinavia, liked Neil's article about
using Telamon's mail program so much, he implemented
it in one of his jobs.
Click the link above to see
a job that uses the ASKPLUS tool from Vitalsoft to check a data base for logical
consistency such as invoice details must exist for invoice header,
current maintenance contracts must have been invoiced etc.
The job is run every night and if there is output, it is mailed, if not
everything is OK. www.olenordab.se
1/25/2001
We have started building a list of consulting resources for our
customers - people who know Suprtool and Suprtool-based applications. We will
feature them on our home page as we discover them, and catalog them on our
Consultants Corner web page.
| Company Name: | Hire Experience, Inc. |
|---|
| Speciality: | Ecometry/MACS |
|---|
| Description: | Ecometry/MACS experts providing reports, extracts, interfaces,
bug fixes, modifications, system review, EDI, XML, and more. |
|---|
| Contact: | Taylor Lumkpin |
|---|
| Email: | taylor@hire-experience.com |
|---|
| Location: | Delray Beach, Florida |
|---|
| Phone: | 561.276.7730 |
|---|
| Fax: | 561.276.3969 |
|---|
| Web site: | hire-experience.com |
|---|
| References: |
AB&C Group, Eve Olson
Another Universe, Tom Stinson
Baileys, Katie Mantis
BaseBall Express, Dave Perlstein
Best Uniform, Paula Szkotak
.... many more
|
|---|
1/24/2001
Customize Your Qedit for Windows Server
While working with Quayne Green (Qgreen@thecreek.com),
Paul Gobes gave this helpful tip:
Is there anyway to take advantage of Command Files when
using the File - Host Command feature of Qedit for Windows?
Maybe Qedit does not honor the HPPATH command ?
No, it does honour HPPATH, but that variable may not be
fully set yet.
Do a showvar hppath at the host commands window, it will show only
the default value set by MPE.
Here at Robelle we have a logon UDC that invokes a command file
to set all the system file equations and variables including
HPPATH. Unfortunately, this logon UDC is not invoked by Qedit for Windows
(due to features/restrictions of HP's RPM code).
So as a workaround, we added the following code to Qeditmgr.Pub.Sys
if qedservmode=1
logon.cmd.robops
endif
Now at the host command window, the HPPATH variable and all our file
equations are properly set.
1/24/2001
Format Date as yyyymmdd?
The simplest way to see your date values in yyyymmdd format, regardless of the
format in which they are stored, is to use the
$stddate feature of Suprtool. For example, if you have date-A in "SRNChronos"
format and date-B in "calendar" format, here is how to list them in standard format:
define anydate,1,4,int
get dataset
item date-A,date,SRNChronos
item date-B,date,calendar
ext anydate = $stddate(date-A)
ext anydate = $stddate(date-B)
list standard
xeq
Tip courtesy Dave Lo, Robelle Technical Support.
1/23/2001
Windows Startup Trick
Sometimes when you logon to Windows, you don't want to run all your Startup
items.
For a faster Startup, keep the Shift key pressed down, from the time you
enter your Windows password until the hard drive stops chattering. Because
this can take some time depending how slow your PC is, you can put something
on the Shift key to keep it pressed down.
For more Windows tips, go to the permanent location
of this story.
1/21/2001
Lynda Bechel from Meyer Distributing asked:
"Is there a way to pick dates that will include only the dates
between the
last day of the month ($date(*/*-1/last) and the prior Monday? This is for
a report that looks at only the days from a Monday to the last day of the
month for partial week. "
Well, yes there is. To find out how, read Hans Hendriks' article.
1/19/2001
Schluchsee, Germany – January 20 - 23, 2001
Many Robelle distributors will be attending this conference. HP aims this event at
CEOs and IT decision makers of HP's Channel Partners, HP Sales Reps, HP Partner Account Managers from Europe, the Middle East and Africa. They have lots of news about the e3000 to share with the partners who make
the machine a success.
1/18/2001
A customer phoned who needed to isolate records where his
operators had entered junk characters like carriage returns
and line feeds.
If you know which column they are in, then Suprtool can find
specific characters. If you don't know the column, Qedit can
find them with the List command.
But this customer didn't have Qedit (yet...) so we found the
a Posix shell solution which finds any lines in the
file called DATAFILE that have non-printable characters:
Read the full article by Paul Gobes, our
tech support manager, to see
all three solutions.
1/18/2001
Hans Hendriks of Robelle Technical Support was given an interesting challenge by
Vic Ferrara (from The Wine Enthusiast). Vic had a file containing EDP-NOs and keywords, with multiple records (up to 12) per EDP-NO value.
He needed to combine the records so that each EDP-NO value had only 1 record, with all keywords for that EDP-NO shown on that record....
In other words, he had to change:
edp1 keyword1 keyword2
edp1 keyword3 keyword4 keyword5
edp1 keyword6
... into
edp1 keyword1 keyword2 keyword3 keyword4 keyword5 keyword6
Find out how they solved the problem with Robelle software:
read the article. You will be
surprised by the answer.
1/17/2001
Robelle's famous newsletter, the "What's Up Doc", was published today and
posted to our web site. You can read the January 2001 issue
on the web, or read the email copy you will receive if you are on the
email list, or read the printed copy that will come to your site if we
don't have your email address.
Stories in this issue include:
Suprtool's Powerful New String Functions
Cleaning Up E-mail Addresses in Ecometry, by Chris Bartram
WOW! 17 X Performance Improvement with Suprtool!
Schedule: February Is Action Packed
An HMO Tries the "e" in "e3000", by Eben Yong
Robelle-L Discussion Group Has Moved, Now on Web
Using Qedit For Windows to Test Suprtool Jobs
Is Your Disc Being Eaten By MPE?
Do those sound familiar? If you have been following the news and tips published on our home
page, they should sound familiar. All the stories appeared here
first!
1/16/2001
How to Change Suprtool's PRN Format
There is no way to change the format of the delimited file created by
Suprtool's "output ,PRN" option, but Robelle would not leave you stranded.
STEXport, which is a module that comes with every copy of Suprtool,
allows you specify exactly
what the format of your delimited output file should be. Change your
Suprtool task to create a self-describing output file ("output foo,LINK"),
and then run that through STEXport
$ input foo
$ quote none
$ {any other options}
$ output foo2
$ exit
Tip courtesy Hans Hendriks, Robelle technical support.
1/16/2001
When: March 8th and 9th
Where: Tech Group University Hagerstown, Maryland.
Instructor: Jeff Kubler
Details at: Tech Group University Website
1/15/2001
In a previous article,
Chris Bartram described strategies for verifying the domain name
in email addresses using WHOIS and NSLOOKUP.
Paul Gobes of Robelle created a job to check the Robelle
database and found a few invalid domain names that needed
manual followup. However, he also found that it took 2-3 seconds
per domain name to do the Internet lookup.
Chris Bartram's database has 1.2 million email addresses, so using
this simple job would have taken 53 days!
Together they created a smarter job that remembers the domain names
that have already been checked and eliminates duplicate domain names.
The lesson is that even though you may have "solved" a problem,
it doesn't always scale up for all organizations without extra work.
Scroll down to the bottom of this
article to see how they scaled up this idea.
1/15/2001
You've heard the term, but what the heck are they?
Let me tell you: They're an exponential leap in Qedit functionality.
They make it possible for you to search for patterns that were previously inconceivable.
- Should you learn them? Yes!
- Do they look intimidating initially? Yes.
- But are they difficult to learn? No!
And regular expressions are found in many other software tools from many sources, so
benefit from the investment in learning them for years to come.
Make a start today, by reading Francois Desrocher's easy introductory
tutorial..
1/12/2001
Anthony Ballo (aballo@ecometry.org) has taken Neil Armstrong's
idea for automated remote DBA and
converted it to work on the Ecometry databases. Nice job Anthony.
1/12/2001
Watch Out For Web Page Editors.
In this recent article we
described a way of making it harder for spammers to harvest email addresses from
your web pages. Mike Shumko of Robelle suggests we
also beware of webpage authoring software that embeds your email address in
the document's <head>. tags: E.g., <LINK rev=made
href="mailto:mike.shumko@robelle.com">
Mike has seen this done by NoteTap and perhaps by FrontPage as well.
It seems like one of those automatic features that programmers would
add to a product, not realizing that perhaps we do not want our raw email
address exposed on the web page.
1/12/2001
More On Emailing From the e3000
In a recent Robelle article, Neil Armstrong
showed how to email a database analysis from the e3000 server to the
DBA. On the Ecometry.org web site, Anthony Ballo has published an article
on three methods of e3000 emailing and another article with
detailed instructions for the free Telamon Mail program.
1/11/2001
There is a new pre-release of Suprtool, version 4.3.03, which allows you to do many
more processing steps in a single pass over the data, saving time and reducing
task complexity. The key is new string functions for the If and Extract command
which allow strings to be upshifted, concatenated and trimmed. It is now a snap to
reformat the fixed address fields of a database into a standard mailing label in a
single step. To test the new software on your applications, contact Robelle at 1-888-robelle or
support@robelle.com
1/10/2001
Fred White Retires.
One of the two creators of the IMAGE database for the e3000 has
retired. Fred White is moving from the Adager lab
to Arizona to
spend more time with his children and grandchildren. Rene Woc of Adager tells us that Fred is 76
years old now and will be 77 in April. Fred is famous for his many conference papers,
including our favorite, The Three
Bears of Image.
For another reaction to Fred's leaving,
read the tribute
to Fred by Chris Gauthier on 3kworld.
Fred White and Jon Bale will long be remembered as
the programmers who created one of the software pillars of HP's success in the commercial market.
1/10/2001
Ron Seybold, editor of The 3000 News Wire, writes his thoughts on
the Dublin Marathon and the HP e3000: what are the qualities that determine success?
It only took 30 minutes for the rains to begin after the starting horn in Dublin. Abby’s racewalk — about half the entrants walked some part of the 26.2 miles, many for charities like Abby’s Arthritis Foundation — lasted a little less than nine hours. More than half that time the rains poured. With a wind chill of about 31 degrees, this year’s race became known as “the day of suffering” in the Dublin papers, while TV commentators said “this race will feel more like 30 miles.”
The 3000 customers know a lot about a hard course, too. They hear from colleagues that their computer is a relic, or that Microsoft will conquer all, so why bother? Suggesting their systems can deliver e-service reliably and cost effectively is a good way to draw a scoff from under-informed consultants. Sometimes, even HP’s people don’t know the story of the 3000’s e-renaissance.
Read the rest of the editorial.
Then consider subscribing to The 3000 News Wire for a source of e3000 specific news and in-depth technical
reviews. Recent articles include: New Training Options, 6.5 Performance, HP Offering Lund's SCOPEUtil,
Implement background jobs from MPEX, Autobahn test drive, ...
1/09/2001
David J. Greer is leaving Robelle on January 8, 2001, after more than 20 years, to pursue new opportunities. You can reach David at his new e-mail address david@davidgreer.ca
Founder Robert Green has resumed active management of all departments, and reaffirmed Robelle's committment to customers of its software products, Qedit and Suprtool. Neil Armstrong took over from David as primary Suprtool developer some years ago, and customers can be assured that Suprtool development will continue unabated. Version 4.4 is due for release in the Spring, and will again include significant enhancements.
1/09/2001
What Can Suprtool Do That Query Can't?
Recently, Chris Goodey (CGoodey@egghead.com) of Egghead
posted on 3000-L
one reason
why you need Suprtool even though you have Query:
From time to time I run into applications that use a character string
to hold multiple values, perhaps a key made up from both an integer and
text string, since Image doesn't provide for concatentated keys.
Another common thing is to find a big buffer of like X100 filled
with all sorts of binary data (packed decimal, integer, etc.)
Sometimes the format of the data is dependent on a record type,
which is easy enough to code in Cobol, but a real pain for use
with ODBC, etc.
Since Cobol can redefine anything, you may find code that moves in something
like an integer account number, followed by a text field, all to a big
field,
then adds that to the data base. It would certainly have been better to
convert
the integer to character and made an all character key, but even this
has problems of its own.
If you have Suprtool,
you can dump Image records in hex and character mode,
much like Fcopy. If you use Image and don't have Suprtool, you really,
really should get it. I have decided I won't work anyplace that doesn't have
Suprtool, as it makes life so difficult.
Anytime I suspect anything funny with a data base record, the first thing
I do is dump it with Suprtool, and take a look at the data. In the standard
Suprtool dump, non-printing characters are replaced by a period, so if I see
any unexpected periods, I also dump it in hex and char, and see what
is really going on.
Permanent bookmark
1/08/2001
Little Known Windows Tricks
Dave Lo
of Robelle's tech support (dave.lo@robelle.com), has searched out some helpful
uses of right-click and shortcuts:
In Windows Explorer, shift + right-click on selected file:
Opens the context menu that includes "Open With", which allows you to open
the file with a program different than the default association.
Add a shortcut to the Windows\SendTo directory:
This will add that shortcut to the SendTo list in Explorer's right-click
context menu. If the shortcut points to a program, this is a quick way to
opening a file with a particular program (e.g. put a shortcut to Qedit for
Windows there!). If the shortcut points to a directory, it will move/copy
the file to that directory (copy if on a different drive, move if on the
same drive).
Add a shortcut key to a program's shortcut:
Add a shortcut key via the Program's shortcut properties, which will
- start the program if it is not running
- switch to that program if it is running already
For example, assign F11 to the Qedit for Windows shortcut, then Qwin is
literally a keystroke away!
alt-PrintScrn:
Copy the image of the current window to the clipboard. You can paste this
image into WordPad, which is an easy to to gather information for technical
support.
right-click My Computer, Properties:
Same as Start - Settings - Control Panel - System
right-click Desktop, Properties:
Same as Start - Settings - Control Panel - Display
right-click Network Neighborhood, Properties:
Same as Start - Settings - Control Panel - Network
Permanent bookmark and other Windows Tips
1/05/2001
17 X Performance Improvement with Suprtool!
Recently, Robert Allen Green, of Long Reach, Inc., Houston, evaluated
our Suprtool product on MPE, and was impressed with the results...
Robert took one of their existing monthly reports, "Activity to closed
Work Orders", which uses Query to access 2 datasets in a database,
selecting on date and order-status, and replaced it with a Suprtool job.
The Query job was run monthly, and took 2 hrs and 18 minutes to run. It
also didn't include component costs, so users would have to manually
lookup the part costs to compute the standard cost of each order. So
in his Suprtool replacement, Robert included tasks to link in the
component costs, so that the final report includes the computed cost
per order. And, to top it all off, Suprtool creates an ascii output
file that can be imported directly into an Excel spreadsheet by the user.
Total time to execute the Suprtool jobstream? 8 minutes. That's a
17-times performance improvement!
Way to go, Robert! Permanent story bookmark
1/05/2001
There are four major e3000 related events in February 2001:
- SigSoftVend, a meeting of vendors with HP.
- Solutions Symposium: training for new and intermediate users
- Sig/3000, a meeting of technical special interest groups such
as Sig/IMAGE.
- Performance Training Seminar in Florida.
Robelle plans to attend all four. Find out more
about these and other upcoming events.
1/05/2001
January 5, 2001 is the last day for submitting presentations for the HPWorld 2001 conference, which will be
August 20-24 in Chicago.
Robelle has submitted an abstract for a paper on building quality software and
a tutorial on IMAGE database internals and performance improvement.
You still have time to write a short abstract for a paper or tutorial - how about one on
using Suprtool with your application.
1/04/2001
Are you having difficulty coming up with a valid .com domain name. It may
seem as if every possible name is already taken, but don't lose hope. The Domainator
is a web site that really helps you find a name. You enter your keywords and it checks
all combinations of those words for availability, foreign languages, rhyming words,
dictionary definitions and existing trademarks!
1/04/2001
Robelle programmer Neil Armstrong was consulting at an Open Skies site,
when accounting users indicated their frustration in discovering whether a commission check had been made for a travel agency.
The current inquiry screen did not allow search by record locator, so they had to scroll through pages and pages of entries to find out if the commission was paid, taking up to five minutes.
Enter Suprtool and its List command. Neil wrote a simple command file that would run Suprtool with a Use file to list the
needed information. The command file prompts the user for the Record Locator number and then uses Suprtool to list the information to the screen. Read more about enabling users.
1/03/2001
Last month we ran an article
by Chris Bartram (Chris.Bartram@usmint.treas.gov)
about using Suprtool to check for obviously wrong email entries
in your database. In Part II, we continue with an "enhancement request":
to check that the domain name in the email address actually exists.
1/02/2001
Archived News and Tips...
HP 3000 Book
HP 3000 Evolution:
Edited by
Bob Green of Robelle, from articles written by Robelle,
by The 3000 Newswire, and by other
experts in the HP 3000 field.
This 300-page book contains the latest information on three important
topics:
Homesteading
HP 3000 Tune Up
Migrating a 3000 application.
An essential reference for every desk!
Order your copy on-line for US$25.
