When to use .NET Macros?
How does one decide when to use .NET API in OutsideView? It really depends on what you are trying to accomplish. You may want to automate a mundane task or perhaps you may even want to add a slew of minor features to enhance an existing application!
Here are some of the things that you can do with the .NET API:
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Productivity aid for things like specialty logins.
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Wizards for installing software or configuring things on the NonStop.
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Integration aid to merge multiple sources of data.
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Data extraction from running legacy applications.
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High data rate transactions.
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.NET custom programming services.
Productivity Aid
OutsideView Enterprise automatically distributes centrally-defined configuration files to groups of end-users or profile members. These configuration files are referred to as static session files because the host address, port, and service name values are preset and therefore same for all members of this profile. However in some environments each profile member’s settings must be unique such as the service name. You can use the .NET API to create a macro that addresses this issue!
Wizards
An example of a wizard that comes with OutsideView is the FTPHints wizard. This wizard has been rewritten in .NET and is now a macro executable. This wizard helps users configure the map hints files on the NonStop Servers. These hint files are used by Outsideview’s FTP client to map directories. You can create your own macro to perform other similar actions or wizards on the NonStop server.
Integration Aid
There are times you may want to integrate data from external sources other than the NonStop server. Or it’s possible you may want to verify a customer’s address by using third party service. Using this tool, you could write a macro that extracts data from an external Web Service or Database and pull that data into your NonStop application for further manipulation.
Data Extraction
One neat thing that you can leverage the .NET API toward is data extraction from your NonStop application. You can take data from an application and export that into a custom formatted Excel file for further review. Even better is that you can target these reports for specific customers and customize the Excel file to suit their preferences and then email it to them – all from the macro.
High Data Rate Transaction
You can use the .NET macro to navigate through your application and automate a repetitive manual data entry process. The macro can read the data from a file and input the data into your NonStop Server application. Imagine how much faster and greater accuracy you can achieve with automating your data entry!
Custom Programming Services
Perhaps you may want to be an external professional resource for converting old style VCBasic macros to the modern .NET program versions so that the converted macros are a base to further extend the functionalities and life of the program.
One thing for sure is that leveraging the .NET framework and API for OutsideView is an extremely powerful enabling tool that users can use to write their Macros.
Videos
There are walk through videos that provide a good launching point in learning how to use the new .NET API located here.
Would you like more information about using .NET Tools for OutsideView? Contact our Senior Software Engineer, Mike Chan at mikec@crystalpoint.com.