DOCUMENTATION CONVENTIONS

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2 This manual contains reference information about software products from Activant Solutions Inc. The software described in this manual and the manual itself are furnished under the terms and conditions of a license agreement. The software consists of software options that are separately licensed. It is against the law to copy the software on any medium, or to enable any software options, except as specifically permitted under the license agreement. In addition, no part of this manual may be copied or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of Activant Solutions Inc. From time to time, Activant makes changes to its software products. Therefore, information in this manual is subject to change, and the illustrations and screens that appear in the manual may differ somewhat from the version of the software provided to you. Created by: Yardley Technical Communication 2006, Activant Solutions Inc. All rights reserved. Activant and the Activant logo are registered trademarks and Activant Prophet 21 is a trademark of Activant Solutions Inc. All other company or product names are the trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. Activant Solutions Inc Southfront Road Livermore, CA Version 16.0 Publication Date: DOCUMENTATION CONVENTIONS The eyeglass symbol ( ) indicates a field on which you can browse. The star ( ) indicates the system default for a field. To allow for the widest possible parameters when printing a report or performing a function, accept the defaults for all of the parameter fields. To accept the defaults, either escape through all the fields, or press [Enter] without specifying any values. Generally, samples in the documentation are shown using the default values. Start and End parameters define the limits to a range of information you will print on a report. If information does not appear on a report, it may be because the information was excluded from the Start, End range. For a detailed explanation on how maintenance screens function, refer to the Tour Guide manual. Use the search tool in Adobe Acrobat Reader 6.0 or higher to find which manual describes a specific module, job, or function. ii

3 Table of Contents 1 INTRODUCTION 4 Data Extract 4 Main Menu 4 2 MAINTENANCE 6 Defining and Saving Data Extractions 6 Table Linking and Relationships 7 PowrDrill of All Available Indices for a Given Table 8 Filters and Fields 10 Generating Data Extractions 13 3 RUN EXTRACTION 14 4 EXTRACTION OPTIONS 16 iii

4 1 INTRODUCTION DATA EXTRACT You can create your own data extraction specifications, including file and field selections, using the Data Extraction module. You can specify links to other tables and filters at the field level. Writing simple queries and extracting the data from the Acclaim system for data warehousing can also be accomplished. The Data Extraction module allows you to: specify a generic date filter; automatically replace any fields that have a value of? with a blank value integrate user-specified control options utilize browses throughout the module Each export is defined with a user-defined name. The AIX filename uses the same name. MAIN MENU To access the Data Extraction module, you can enter DATA-EXTRACT at the jump to box or move through the menus by selecting the System Administration option from the main menu; then choose Utilities from the System Administration menu, and then select Data Extraction from the Utilities menu: 4

5 1 INTRODUCTION The main menu of the Data Extraction module appears: Data Extraction Maintenance... defines each data extraction and the fields to be exported. The system also generates the query (in the Progress programming language) for an extraction when it is saved in the Maintenance section. For more information on this option, refer to the next section. Run Extraction... runs the actual export. You select which exports to run by setting a parameter screen. For more information on running extractions, refer to the Run Extraction chapter on page 14. Extraction Options... sets specific information regarding the extraction process, such as the type of delimiter and the AIX directory. More information on these options is found in the Extraction Options chapter on page 16. Important! You will need to define all necessary AIX directories before creating any exports, since the system does not create directories as extractions are written or run. The directory /conv will need to be created on the network directory before you use this module because this directory will store all query code files ending with an exp extension. Full access (read, write, execute permissions) will need to be applied to these directories as well, so that multiple users may write to and run files from these directories. If this is not done, you may see file permission errors ( User does not have permissions to write extraction file! ) when trying to generate or run an extraction. 5

6 2 MAINTENANCE DEFINING AND SAVING S You define queries for data extraction by using the Data Extraction Maintenance feature. When the Data Extraction Maintenance option is selected, the following screen appears: Name... name of the data extraction query. The extraction name can be up to 12 characters in length. Project... name of the project for which the query is being created. 6

7 2 MAINTENANCE Desc... describes the purpose of the query/project. Tables... lists the tables or areas from where information is retrieved. Press {F3] for the File Layout Browse. The system displays database specific tables. Join is MANdatory (inner join) or OPTional (outer join). Relationships Field... specific field from the Tables window. Press [F3] to show the available fields. Link Table... specifies the database to link to Tables window. Press [F3] to see available tables. Only previously linked or primary tables appear. Link Field... the common field between the multiple tables. Filters... the conditions for the data to meet before it is retrieved for the export. Several filters are available. Prompts are available for Start and End Dates. You would set up an extraction maintenance record for each AIX file that would be generated. It is recommended that the extraction name be prefixed with the data type such as S- for Sales, I- for Inventory, and P- for Purchase. This helps to easily specify a range of extractions when running extractions, and to limit them by extraction type. Field names are added as the first record of each extraction file. Important! This program does not create fields resulting from mathematical calculations. Calculated fields need to be generated via another application, such as Microsoft Excel or Access. TABLE LINKING AND RELATIONSHIPS Multiple tables can be linked together to produce a single extraction file. The links are specified in the Relationships section of the screen. Relationships are only displayed and can only be edited for the selected table in the Tables section. To access the relationships for a specific table, select a table in the Tables section and then press [Ctrl][N]. Note: Relationships should never be set up for the primary table (first entry in the Tables section). The Relationships section is to be used to link additional tables back to the primary table (or other additional tables). Once the relationships have been defined, fields can be selected from any of the linked tables. As an example, this linking could be used for the export of order header data since order header data is stored in two different tables. 7

8 2 MAINTENANCE An example of a relationship definition is shown in the following screen for the p21.ord_2 table. Browses are available for each of the fields in the Tables and Relationships sections. POWRDRILL OF ALL AVAILABLE INDICES FOR A GIVEN TABLE A Powrdrill lists all available indices for a given table in the Tables frame. This will help you link tables together. While in the Tables frame, if the cursor is on a table name (not the database or mandatory fields), you can press [F6] to see a list of available indices for that table. Based on the fields that display for the indices, you can then determine the other tables to which they can link efficiently. 8

9 2 MAINTENANCE The following screen shows where the cursor needs to be before you press [F6] to access the PowrDrill. A table name must be in the field before you should press [F6]: The cursor must be on the name of a table before you press [F6]. When [F6] is pressed on the table name, the Index List for Table PowrDrill appears, similar to the following screen: The index name is listed in capital letters on the left. The fields in the index are listed on the right, separated by colons. The first 50 characters of the field list are shown. 9

10 2 MAINTENANCE FILTERS AND FIELDS Filters can be defined for any field in the table. You can also define a generic start and end date filter. If you use the generic token <Start Date> or <End Date> in the filter, this date will be substituted with dates specified on the parameter screen when running the export. To browse for a field name, first select the table from the drop-down list, which appears when [F3] is pressed, and then choose a field from the list of fields that displays for that table. The date tokens are also available in a drop-down list. To use a literal string in the filter, it must be contained within quotation marks. For example, to see invoices for all customers with a customer code greater than the letter F, the filter should read dyn1.wbw_head.cust_code GT F (with F in quotation marks). There are other tokens you can use in the Filters frame: <Start Cust>, <End Cust>, <Start Vend>, <End Vend>, <Start Item>, <End Item>, <Start Slm>, <End Slm>, <Start Tkr>, <End Tkr>. Note: The vendor tokens are for vendor codes and not vendor numbers. 10

11 2 MAINTENANCE An example of a filter definition is shown in the following screen: You can select the fields that are to be extracted from the query. A browse is available for the tables that were listed in the Table section, and once the table is selected, a browse shows the available fields for that table. 11

12 2 MAINTENANCE You can also select all fields in a given table without having to enter each field separately. By entering the keyword ALL in the field slot, all fields of a specific table are included. The table name still needs to be specified so the system knows for which table to include all fields. There is an additional mapping option that can be used. This option allows you to change the data that appears in the export file. Once the table and field are selected, press [F6] on the field to access the map. A pop-up window similar to the following appears: 12

13 2 MAINTENANCE You can press [F3] on the first Op field to browse for the operator. You then enter the To and From values, which should be literal values without quotation marks. (The system applies the quotation marks when the extraction is generated.) In the prior screen s example, if the dyn1.wbw_head.cust_code equals MICIND, then MICIND will be exported as the customer code. GENERATING S Generating data extractions, the programming code files that are run to create the text files (.txt) of your extracted data, is largely an automated process, occurring when an extraction is saved on this maintenance screen. Extraction files are generated in Progress code. A program is created for each extraction and named by the extraction name with an.exp extension. These program files always reside in the /conv directory. The definition of each extraction and the generation of the extraction code would only need to be done once for each extraction. If changes are needed, the extraction can be edited and would be regenerated when saved. The files resulting from running a data extraction are data files ending with a.txt file extension. They are located in the directory indicated by the value entered in the AIX Directory field of the Extraction Options. For more information on this directory setting, refer to the Extraction Options chapter on page

14 3 RUN EXTRACTION The Run Extraction option is used to pull data from the Acclaim system into an AIX file. Once all the extractions have been defined and generated, they can be run either individually or by a range of extractions. When this option is selected, the following parameter screen appears: Extraction Start/End Filter Date Start/End... range of the data extraction names. Press [F3] to view a browse of available extractions.... range of filter dates. The Start and End dates correspond to any generic filter dates specified on the Data Extraction Maintenance screen. These will have no effect on extractions if the date tokens are not used within the extraction. Filter Customer Start/End... range of customer codes to be filtered. 14

15 3 RUN EXTRACTION Filter Vendor Start/End Filter Item Start/End Filter Sales Rep Start/End Filter Order Taker Start/End... range of vendor codes to be filtered.... range of item codes.... range of sales reps for the filtered data.... range of order takers for the filtered information. Note: You may receive the message, User does not have permissions to write extraction file! This indicates that you cannot write to the directory set up in the Extraction Options section. If you see this message, refer to your system administrator for assistance. More information on the Extraction Options section is found on page 16. Full access (read, write, execute permissions) will need to be applied to these directories as well, so that multiple users may write to and run files from these directories. If this is not done, you may see file permission errors ( User does not have permissions to write extraction file! ) when trying to generate or run an extraction. The Run Extraction option can be placed within a macro to run with other end-of-day macros. When the extraction is run, all files extracted are stored in the AIX directory that was specified in the Extraction Options. You can also specify the field delimiter to be used in the extraction. Important! If you run the same extraction more than once, the existing file is completely overwritten. This occurs even if you run, and then re-run the extraction on different days. The process is set up like this in the thought that you will move or use the created file before the extraction is run again. The first line in the extracted data file will include the field names, also separated by the field delimiter. All extracted data with a value of? is replaced with a blank space. Tip! Defining AIX Directories Remember that all necessary directories must be created before you generate and run any exports. The /conv directory must be created on the network directory before running any data extraction option. Take care that all users in your company who create and run exports should have full access to these directories. 15

16 4 EXTRACTION OPTIONS The Extraction Options section holds information on the field delimiter and AIX directory you want to use. To access these options, choose the Extraction Options from the Data Extraction main menu. A screen similar to the following displays: Field Delimiter... the field delimiter in the file. The field delimiter can be any ASCII character and if it cannot be typed from the keyboard, you can identify it with the carat symbol (^) and the decimal ASCII representation. For example, in the prior screen, 009 is the decimal ASCII representation for the Tab key. AIX Directory... directory where the current extractions are stored. It is mandatory that you create this directory on your system because this directory stores the extracted data files. These files, created from running an extraction/query, have.txt file extensions. Note: If you do not have the directory specified here on your network, create it in your home directory before you start generating and running extractions. When the extraction options are accepted and saved, you are prompted whether you wish to regenerate the existing data extractions. When you answer yes, any existing data extraction is regenerated, applying the updated extraction options. A Regenerating message also displays so that you know the regeneration is taking place.. 16

17 4 EXTRACTION OPTIONS When you answer Yes to the prompt, the Regenerating message appears: 17