Report A is run daily by A.fex. Reports B & C are related to A (A=transactionsDaily; B=holdingsByDealer; C=holdingsByName), and are created by running B.fex and C.fex respectively. Report A is generated and distributed by Report Caster...when it does not find any records to report for that day, it is distributed empty.

My requirements for this enhancement are...

When Report A contains no records:

Cancel distribution of the report

Append a string to the bottom of both reports B & C that reads (para) "***There were no transactions for yesterday***"

I was hoping that someone might have run into this requirement in the past, and could point me in the right direction...more for the second requirement than the first. Thanks!

Question 1:
Easiest thing to do is run your request then add the following to the bottom

-RUN
-SET &&KILL_RPC = IF &LINES EQ 0 THEN 'Y' ELSE 'N';

&&KILL_RPC is a reserved var for Report Caster that tells it to end immediately - no distribution

Question 2:
You would need to run report A again and test &LINES.

-RUN
-SET &NORECORDS=IF &LINES EQ 0 THEN '***There were no transactions for yesterday***' ELSE '';

Then in reports B and C you could include
ON TABLE SUBFOOT
"&NORECORDS"

You could create a file with the record count and read that file in before processing reports B and C. Something like:

-* This is to save the original record count
-SET &TTLCNT=&LINES;
SET HOLDLIST PRINTONLY
FILEDEF DAILYCNT DISK /yourpath/DAILYCNT&YYMD.EVAL.TXT
DEFINE FILE CAR
CNT_RCS/D8=&TTLCNT;
END
TABLE FILE CAR
PRINT CNT_RCS
BY CAR NOPRINT
WHERE RECORDLIMIT EQ 1
ON TABLE SAVE AS DAILYCNT
END

-* (then use Darin's suggestion)
-SET &&KILL_RPC = IF &TTLCNT EQ 0 THEN 'Y' ELSE 'N';



then in B & C
you would repeat the filedef and:
-READ DAILYCNT &RCS.D8.
-RUN
-IF &RCS EQ 0 THEN GOTO NORECS;

Thanks for the ideas! I couldn't remote in over the weekend, so I'm attempting to code this today. I'll post later on about how it all came out.

All:

Don't we just love IBI's undocumented &&vars like Darrin Lee's disclosure of &&KILL_RPC?

This complaint is often voiced at user group and Summit meetings. If anyone knows of a COMPLETE list of all such, please post a reference to its location.

[My suspecion is that IBI keeps these hidden because many deal with system security values (I've seen a few of them), which if publically known would promote 'hacker heaven'.]

We've had an issue for years about not wanting to use RCaster notification 'None', but had to do so to eliminate 'No report to distribute' e-mails that come out as "errors" when the output is FTP'd or FILEDEF'd elsewhere.


Chris Austin:

I hope that your reports A and B are true reports that contain some records/lines. If they are themselves &LINES EQ 0, and are forced to print by using SET EMPTYREPORT=ON, then your "***There were no transactions for yesterday***" remark won't show in a FOOTER "at the bottom of both reports".

We've pointed out to IBI that the FOOTER text does not print when an empty report is forced by EMPTYREPORT=ON. They have passed our issue to their product improvement group.

Chris Burtt

&&KILL_RPC is actually in the documentation, although you probably wouldn't find it unless you already knew exactly what you were looking for and/or knew it was in there somewhere. You'll find it in Appendix B of the Report Caster User's Manual.

quote:

Originally posted by cburtt:
All:

Don't we just love IBI's undocumented &&vars like Darrin Lee's disclosure of &&KILL_RPC?

This complaint is often voiced at user group and Summit meetings. If anyone knows of a COMPLETE list of all such, please post a reference to its location.

[My suspecion is that IBI keeps these hidden because many deal with system security values (I've seen a few of them), which if publically known would promote 'hacker heaven'.]

We've had an issue for years about not wanting to use RCaster notification 'None', but had to do so to eliminate 'No report to distribute' e-mails that come out as "errors" when the output is FTP'd or FILEDEF'd elsewhere.

I've probably read 1000 pages of WebFocus documentation since November, and there is no way that I would dig through it in lieu of posting a question here or referring to an existing .fex w/ the functionality I'm dealing with (9/10 instances where research is needed, this is how I figure it out).

Documenting an application with such a large scope is no joke...I'm sure we'd all appreciate more relevant 1-pagers, quick hits, something to thumbtack on the wall and refer to, etc...though it could be a lot worse!

quote:

Chris Austin:

I hope that your reports A and B are true reports that contain some records/lines. If they are themselves &LINES EQ 0, and are forced to print by using SET EMPTYREPORT=ON, then your "***There were no transactions for yesterday***" remark won't show in a FOOTER "at the bottom of both reports".

We've pointed out to IBI that the FOOTER text does not print when an empty report is forced by EMPTYREPORT=ON. They have passed our issue to their product improvement group.

Chris Burtt

Thanks for the heads-up. Both of the downstream reports will always contain lines.

As has been mentioned recently in another post, SET EMPTYREPORT=ANSI
prints the footer.