[Info-vax] Coding Excel files...

[VAXman- at SendSpamHere.ORG]

In article <ldg9ak$soa$1 at news.albasani.net>, Jan-Erik Soderholm <jan-erik.soderholm at telia.com> writes:
>{...snip...}
>
>Not at all. The data is usualy in some Rdb table (written by the
>Cobol applications) and some batch job runs Python and creates
>the XLS files (using the Python Rdb interface and the Excel
>tools). Sometimes the Cobol code submittes the batch job or
>it can be done using a table trigger.

Good grief.  I hate COBOLlers LIB$SPAWNing shit all over the place.  I hate
it even more when the LIB$SPAWN a SUBMIT command.



>Another Cobol app writes data to a table and a table trigger
>submittes a job that uses the Python PDF ("ReportLab") tools
>to create PDF reports (accessed through the web server, WASD).

So, if I've read you right, you're running a Python script in a BATCH job to
convert tabled data to XLS.



>I'm sure Perl works fine also, but I personaly don't like Perl. :-)
>Python feels more "modern" and structured.

No real PERL (save to figure out how well the class libraries handled the
Excel output.  I link those bits into C code which the customer can call
from their COBOL.  The most COBOL I ever wrote was to show them how to do
the call.  Strange, they'd never seen the:

  INSPECT blah-blah TALLYING blah-blah-LEN FOR CHARACTERS BEFORE SPACES.

...syntax before I'd used it.  I thank Google for that COBOL syntax.

They then invoke the call:

  CALL "Table2Excel" USING BY DESCRIPTOR table-data-descriptor
                           BY DESCRIPTOR Excel-FILE(1:Excel-FILE-LEN)
                           BY DESCRIPTOR Image-FILE(1:Image-FILE-LEN)
                           BY DESCRIPTOR "Orange"  <==header bg color
                           BY DESCRIPTOR "Black"   <==header fg color
                     GIVING RET-STATUS.

There's no need for unnecessary process creation and waiting about for 
that process to complete.  It's all done, and quite quickly too, in the
context of the caller.

-- 
VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker    VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)ORG

Well I speak to machines with the voice of humanity.