Scripting

Dap,

 

Yes, PERL is certainly an option.  I've used it for a number of tasks on both Unix and Windows. 

 

thanks.

Jason Beard

617-548-5568

jabeard3@gmail.com

dap, just to give you some other ideas/viewpoint, since I've seen this situation many times at many clients. I've never been a fan of complicated "elegant" scripting, whether it's shell scripts, Perl, python, or whatever. The reason I don't like it is because it's usually written by developers who think they're being "clever", when what they are doing is costing their organizations money down the line, since their "solution" will need to be scrapped when no one can understand it.

So, I'm wary of your statement "does not accomplish everything we need due to the layers of nesting we do in the scripts". If your script can't be run under MKS with perhaps some tweaking, then it's probably too convoluted to begin with, and you should be looking at a different solution.

MKS running on Windows does do a fairly good job of keeping the scripting option open to you, since most things still work OK.
Some other options:
-Since you're moving to Windows, you can use Windows scripting host or PowerShell.
-what about ProcessFlow Integrator?

John:

What, do you a beef with developer or Perl? Perl is a wonderful option, Windows script does not always play well with others. I have seen every type of Lawson solution "scrapped" because it's fundamentally flawed. What, you can't be "clever" with other Lawson solutions? Crude javascript, COBOL, Unix Shell, etc. You could just as easily write a Windows script that winds up being scrapped, or a ProcessFlow for that matter. It comes down to fundamentals. Companies need to practice a methodology (functional and techical specs), use defect tracking and versioning tools (e.g. Subversion). In my experience, the clear majority do not do this. As one IT director warned me recently, "I don't want my developers hampered by checking in or checking out code." Well, there is an example of someone setting themselves up for plenty of future headaches.

Dap, ActiveState Perl for Windows is a mature development Perl environment. the Perl Package Manager (PPM) is included. Installation is a breeze.

However, even though I have taken issue with John's comment, he does make a valid point here. What you need to do should be there, but you need to do your research and understand that if you go the Perl route it's not considered a standard Lawson solution so you better document it! :o)

Warm Regards,

Robert.

I concur Robert. Sometimes I can get out of hand with scripting solutions, hoping to one day script my way out of a job. Without documentation & desgin specs, any code will would be hard for other developers to follow, but not impossible. Perl is the way to go.

I had an ongoing debate with a windows admin a while back, and we would go back and forth comparing his windows scripts with my PERL scripts. There was nothing he could do with windows scripting that I could not do cleaner, and much more efficiently with way less code in PERL.

Nearly all developers can stand adversity
but if you want to test a developers character
give him PERL.

./RM

Go back and read my post. I wasn't singling out Perl; what I was saying is that I have seen many scripting options, Perl being but one, used to deliver an incoherent--and unmaintainable--"solution", delivered to a client who has no idea what to do when it needs additional work. Given that the original shell script solution was too complicated to survive a port from Unix to Windows (running MKS "UNIX" no less), I was suggesting that perhaps the solution itself needed to be revisited, and was suggesting some other options.

John:

I took too harsh a line there, sorry.  Do you believe that if the developer had been responsible and also delivered the approprite technical and functional requirements, or the client required such, situations such as this could be avoided?  Now that I think about it, I don't think you can ever "avoid it", but perhaps "lesson the impact"?

Regards,
Robert.

Ok, lets start this again. I'm new to lawson and after some initial review it appears to me that a perl script could be used to regularly submit some update transactions to the portal. Can anyone direct me some appropriate reference material or examples for this?