All,

I am interested in getting feeback on naming conventions for .fex procedures in WebFOCUS. We currently have no particular form to follow. What are some suggestions? Any feedback is greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

This message has been edited. Last edited by: viking08,

Hi,

If you're writing reports for different departments within your company/organization, my suggestion would be to use something like this

MANF001-Vehicle model by country

First four letters would represent the department to which you're writing the procedure.

Second three numbers would be your serial number (this number increases when you write more reports for the same department)

Third may be a hyphen/dash

After that, you can have a description about your .fex file.

Also look for suggestions from other focal community members!

I asked the very same question a couple of months ago.

I use a naming convention that is supposed to give me some insight as to what the fex does, viz: sales_prodvolume_across_month.fex but as you can see these can get really long, and don't necessarily indicate everything that's in the report.

I've started a Lotus Notes database that includes the fex name, a snapshot of the input parameters screen and a sample of the output, so my users can browse through the reports and select one before asking me to produce yet another report that has essentially the same information as an existing one.

But that's still in development and as the old saying goes:

When you are up to your arse in alligators,
It's often difficult to remember
That the first objective
Was to drain the swamp.

(Sorry about going all English on you but it seems this forum software objects to the word *** - even though it's just a donkey and appears countless times in popular religous books ! I bet if I wrote bum it would get through ...).

This message has been edited. Last edited by: George Patton,

Hmmm, I like that option snapshot of input parm screen and sample of output, it will be more clear for users.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Venkat-,

Here is an option that we use at one of my previous companies. Just like mentioned above. Using a DEPT/AREA/GROUP and a Number for the procedure which was always on the page bottom of the report/html etc.. We also had a database table with that as the key value along with a description. you could always add a url to a sample report. having a database also lends itself to quering by WebFOCUS.

At least we are not as restricted as we were years ago with only 8 characters for the name.

We prefix all files belonging to one report ( .fex and .htm ) with an unique four digit number.

e.g.
0104_PRODUCTLIST.FEX
0104_PRODUCTLIST_INCL.FEX
0104_PRODUCTLIST_BY_SUPPLIER.HTM

Only the one visible on the dashboard must have a descriptive name after the prefix.

The prefix ( unique number ) is used to document the "report". Both for end-user and developers.

Also very useful when a user has a question about "that report I always use...". It's very nice that they now complain about report 0104.

Greets,Dave

quote:

I bet if I wrote bum it would get through ...).

It did!

Like Dave, I get requests for "the report that I always use" - but often with some minor modification suggested. I also use &FOCFEXNAME to put the FEX at the bottom of the report.

Does it help? No! They throw away the old report so they can't tell me the FEX name. grrrrrrrr......

Been there, done that.

We have about 5000 adhoc reports, most variations on other reports.

BTW, our naming structure is:
SSSDDnnn or SSSnnnntttttt...

Where:
SSS is the System
DD is the department
nnn or nnnn is the report id.
ttttttt is a report component

We also have a set of fexes that start with UTL that are utilities, common includes, etc.

I think the important thing here is to define your naming structure, document it, and stick to it.

Thanks for all of the feedback!