Request: A client recently asked for ideas on how to restart part way through a custom command procedure. Specifically the client has a customized process which runs after the payroll/processing/update menu item. This process contains several program executables which produce various reports and will be submitted to run after the payroll update has completed.
In case of a program failure, the client does not want to re-run reports which have already ran. The clients wants to fix whatever the problem was, then re-submit the process, and have it start automatically where it failed previously.
Resolution: The are several alternative resolutions. This article presents a custom solution which allows customers to control the re-run process. The solution uses the batch reporting process delivered with emPath. Following is some overview detail. The attached example contains additional detail.
(1) Following is an example screen print which allows user control over the process:
(2) The example command procedure attached to this article uses subroutines for each custom report. There is also a mainline section with if statements which test the values entered in the screen shown above. Following is the mainline section and the if statements mentioned:
(if /i "%runrpt001%" equ "Y" call :sub050_run_rpt_001) >> %joblog% 2>&1 || %x%
(if /i "%runrpt002%" equ "Y" call :sub060_run_rpt_002) >> %joblog% 2>&1 || %x%
(if /i "%runrpt003%" equ "Y" call :sub070_run_rpt_003) >> %joblog% 2>&1 || %x%
(3) The example command procedure includes the use of a custom PYT parse utility. Addition detail is available for consideration.
Note that rather than using the custom PYT parse utility you can write a program to read the PYT and accomplish the same thing.
(4) The example command procedure uses many features discussed in an article entitled Q50018 - HOWTO: emPath Custom Command Procedures. Significant detail and a number of examples are provided.