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[abracadabra]

Hello Everyone,

I have a situation where a number of jobs are being run and i need to monitor the Jobs for each client and update an excel sheet for the nos of records run . To update the excel sheet I need to look at a dataset for a particular client. There are about 120 such clients. We need to automate this to save time. What I was thinking of was to give the high level qualifier and the date(daily run) and then give a *(wildcard) and the module would look into all the datasets for that date and update the excel sheet.
The two questions which I have here are:

1) Is it possible to update and excel sheet from a Rexx routine. If so, how?
2) Is it possible to use wildcards?

Hope you guys will help out with your suggestions.

Thanks
Have a nice day
_________________
Cheers!

[stefan]

hi abracadabra,

this seems not to be a typical task for a beginner. the problem is divided in two topics which allow different solutions. the first is to find out the generic dataset names. this might be done by issuing a listc command from within a rexx procedure. the statement could look like "tso listc lvl("high_level_qualifiers")" when high_level_qualifier is a variable containing the fixed portion of your dataset names. the output of this tso command should be trapped into a stem variable and scanned for determing the specific dataset names. have a look on the buildin function OUTTRAP in the rexx books for this function. once you have the dataset names you should read those datasets with EXECIO to count the records processed, all to be done preferrably in a loop.
The more complex problem is to put this information in an excel sheet as you have to cross over to a different operating system.
Assume you prefer a process triggered by the mainframe than the only solution I see is to install the ISPF workstation agent on the pc. this tool is included in ISPF on the mainframe and needs no additional fee. it runs a program which acts as a tcp/ip server which can be contacted by special ISPF calls which you can include in your rexx program. by this way it is possible to send the information collected from the mainframe datasets right away to the designated workstation and to start a modal process on this machine to import the transferred file into an excel sheet, preferrably by an excel macro.
If you prefer a process triggered by a workstation you should send a batch file containing JCL to the mainframe by tcp/ip. this jcl is then processes automatically by JES and should start your rexx script to collect the data needed. meanwhile the workstation routine could check the presence of the mainframe result file. if the check is successful this file could be transferred back to then workstation and imported to excel by a macro.

hope this helps

stefan