News & Views, September 2000

This newsletter goes to a wide variety of companies of every size and from every industry. Since the mrc-Productivity Series is used in so many different ways, the newsletter articles cover a broad range of topics. However, one topic has never been discussed, although it applies to every single customer: you’ve all made a considerable investment in the mrc-Productivity Series.

For example, let’s say you bought the mrc-Productivity Series 5 years ago for a P-20 system. You probably spent around $35,000 for an unlimited-user license (including client/server). You then spent another $1800 to train some of your staff, plus you’ve paid maintenance and warranty at 10% for the last five years for an additional $17,500. Your investment by now is likely to be around $55,000.

Our development team works hard to make sure that you get full value out of the mrc-Productivity Series, both when you bought it and today. They work so hard, in fact, that the mrc-Productivity Series of today (release 8.0) is a very different product than the one you bought 5-10 years ago, or even last year!

Many of you are too busy to keep up with all of our enhancements, upgrades, and new releases. In addition, many of you are not confronted with the problems that other departments within your organization may be facing, so changes to the mrc-Productivity Series do not apply to you. Whatever the reason, we know that many mrc customers are not taking full advantage of the mrc-Productivity Series²⁰⁰⁰, despite your continued investment and our many enhancements.

The astronomical growth of the Internet and the importance of e-business have created a new set of business issues to which the mrc-Productivity Series²⁰⁰⁰ has responded. Although your department might not be dealing directly with these issues, your company surely is, or will be in the very near future. In fact, someone in your organization right now might be shopping for a tool that will get your company’s AS/400 data to the Web, without realizing that you already have that capability in the mrc-Productivity Series²⁰⁰⁰.

One of our customers was prepared to spend $100,000 on a Java development product. During a technical support call to mrc for a report-writing question, the customer discovered that the mrc-Productivity Series²⁰⁰⁰ could generate the necessary Web applications and more. A refresher training course at $1000/day was all the company needed, at quite a savings to their e-business budget!

If your company is considering any kind of Web initiative — whether it’s a company intranet site, a business-to-business extranet site, an e-commerce site, or even just a Web presence on the Internet — then the mrc-Productivity Series²⁰⁰⁰ may be the fastest, easiest, and least expensive solution. A refresher training class or a new look at our user manual may be all you need to start building Web applications today. Isn’t it worth a call to one of product specialists to find out?

Last month we told you about CGI — the exciting addition to the mrc-Productivity Series²⁰⁰⁰. We are really anxious for you to try it out! We’ve updated the Web version of our user manual with everything you need to know to start building CGI applications right away.

View the CGI chapter of the manual by clicking here

Download the CGI software update (MRC8000712) here

FYI: You will need your user name and password to logon to this area.

This month’s technical article is a two-part discussion of an issue that many mrc customers face. Controlling runtime record selection is a commonly-used feature. But what happens when an External Object is involved? Brian Crowley provides us with the answers in this article. Please watch next month’s News & Views for part two of this article.

Many mrc customers are familiar with the Runtime Selection Criteria feature available in reports and summaries. By specifying a ‘?’ for the record selection value, the end user is prompted for record selection values at runtime. Now, mrc also offers another technique for accomplishing runtime record selection using external objects. The external object method will allow the application builder, instead of the application user, to determine which database records will be available to the end user.

Consider a few examples when the external object method might be appropriate: record-level security and selection based on certain dates (like today’s date.)

"Record-level security" is a term used to describe "displaying different records from the file to different users running the same application." Record-level security might be useful when you allow customers and vendors to view information from your database files. Consider an example of displaying open sales orders to customers. Creating separate applications for each customer, with a hardcoded customer number for selection criteria, would be a cumbersome way to accomplish the necessary security. Instead, you could create one application that all customers will use and display records for only the customer number associated with the user’s profile. There are only two requirements for creating an mrc inquiry application like this. First, the application needs to be sequenced by the customer number and, second, the external object needs to check a security file that ties a customer number to a user profile. mrc supplies external object ORTNKEY as an example suitable for inquires, graphs, and maintainers. External object OVLDRECORD is an example suitable for reports and summaries. Please see the source code of those objects for explicit details on creating the security file, coding the object, and defining the object to mrc.

This concept of certain records "belonging" to certain users could also be applied to allowing internal salespeople to view only their own sales data. In this example, the application would need to be sequenced by the salesman number. Further, you could set up different levels of users so that managers might be able to view data for the salespeople for which they are responsible. This could be accomplished by using more than one key field, such as a manager’s code and a salesman number.

Another example would be displaying information based on a date. Perhaps you want to create a report of all customer invoices that are 30 days past due. You could use the standard runtime selection criteria that will prompt the end user for a date that is 30 days in the past. That is useful when you want to let users enter any date. However, in this case, you really want to run this report without prompting the user. You know that you always want to test the invoice record for being due 30 days prior to today. To accomplish this, you could create an object that receives the invoice date from each record and passes back a parameter which controls whether this record should be used in the report. External object OVLDRECDAT is an example of this type of object appropriate for reports and summaries. Please see the source code of that object for explicit details on coding the object and defining the object to mrc.

The objects mentioned here will need to be tailored for your specific use, but provide goods examples. These techniques are valid in all mrc Web applications (Java and CGI), green-screen reports and summaries, and client/server retrievals and reports. If you are interested in using these techniques in templates not listed here, the logic can be added to other templates for a nominal consulting fee. If you are interested in using these techniques to improve your applications, but do not have staff available to create external objects for your specific needs, please contact the mrc help desk and ask for consulting services. mrc’s consultants could write these types of external objects for you promptly and inexpensively.

mrc offers training sessions at both your location and ours. Visit our education area for more information on our education services, or click here to view our schedule for the entire year. (You will have to log in with your user name and password to visit this area. If you need login instructions, please click here first.)