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Introduction
Professional Programming Services is proud to introduce our latest innovation in job
automation & process scheduling - "Virtual Operator".
Nicknamed
Casper,
Virtual Operator acts like a "friendly ghost" capable of interacting
with any application "as if" it were looking at a screen and
responding to what it sees with its own "virtual" keyboard.
With
Virtual Operator, it is now possible to create a macro and run any program or series of programs automatically,
without operator
assistance, and without modifying a single line of your existing source code. These
macros can also be scheduled
to run during non peak
hours thereby freeing up resources and increasing overall system
performance. Many of our clients have automated the bulk of their month end
processing by utilizing this technology. Please contact us
to find out more.
System Requirements
Thoroughbred Basic Environment 8.3 or higher.
Unix / Linux (all flavors including SCO, HP-UX and many more).
How It
Works
Virtual Operator creates and attaches itself to a system level port. and can
therefore respond to any application program "as if" from a keyboard.
Conversely, information sent or displayed to the screen by the application
program can be monitored and evaluated by Virtual Operator.
With this
communication link established, a user or System Administrator can then train
Virtual Operator via the Virtual Operator Scripting Language (VOSL) to respond
appropriately to an application's requirements. VOSL is a simple yet powerful
and elegant scripting/macro language used to automatically monitor and respond to
input required by a specific application program.
Virtual Operator Script Example
In this oversimplified example, the application program (see figure
1) expects the user to
respond to three pieces of information: Starting Customer #, Ending Customer #
and Printer Selection. The VOSL Script (see figure 2), will cause this
application program to run a report of all customers whose codes begin with
"1234", to printer 6. VOSL can also trap for ERROR and TIMEOUT
conditions.
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