I'm creating some castor jobs to FTP XML reports and I was wondering if there is a way that you can delay a job from running if another job is running?
Is there a way to have castor automatically re-run a job if it fails?
Is there a way to have WebFOCUS do notification if castor is down?
Is there a way to use variables in the output file name?

Basically does want one know any tricks to make ReportCastor smarter.

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

After taking a look at the document 'ReportCaster Development and Administration Manual 5.2.3' I was able to answer some of my questions.

The one question I have not been able to find any thing on is if ReportCastor can FTP a file with a variable as part of the name.

For example say I wanted to send a file that had the date the report was ran as part of the name, rpt&YYMD.html

well, you could always create a variable with the current system date or some adjusted version of it as part of the filename
-SET &OUTPUT = 'RPT' | &YYMD | '.HTML';
then ON TABLE HOLD AS &OUTPUT FORMAT HTML
...
but you don't even need a filename just to have caster send its output as an inline html.

Does this work for other types of output? eg. XML, Excel, Word

oh sure, you can make your output file name anyway you like.
you can just call it FRED
but you can filedef it
-SET &MYOUTPUT='D:\IBI\...\RPT' | &YYMD | '.XLS';
FILEDEF FRED DISK &MYOUTPUT
and then ON TABLE HOLD AS FRED FORMAT EXL2K
and then the real name of the file will be
RPT20040712.xls
Works like a charm.

Susanna, to follow this all the way thru for a novice, would you name the output file FRED in reportcaster?

Susannah was using FRED as an example. The file can be any name you choose.

No, John. Fred is just the nickname used by the FILEDEF statement . this example parks the named whatever is &MYOUTPUT as an .xls file wherever the FILEDEF statement has designated.