In October 2004 an old Enable BBS
buddy, Carleton U., found this page via the AltaVista search engine and
contacted us at Oh Saratoga! This spurred me on to try to expand
knowledge of Enable OA via these few pages and to open up a mini-forum
[below]. One can reach me by returning to the Big Oh! home page and using the
Contact Us option on the scrolling Quick Menu. Or use the manual
method detailed below.
All are welcome to ask questions and inquire about the immortality of Enable OA.
All are welcome to ask questions and inquire about the immortality of Enable OA.
I still use Enable OA 4.5, the Integrated Package from Enable Software [originally called The Software Group] of Ballston Lake N.Y.
How about an online old-time Enable reunion?? Randy Brinson and other Enable buddies, where are you?
/francis g. mccloskey
E--- m--a-i-l me by putting the AT sign between ppio and taconic.net and shoot me a quick note about how Enable works for you or how you would like it to work. Got a system with Enable on it and need some tech support?? Try me for a bit of free advice or helpdesk.
While Enable never got a chance to shine with SQL etc. there are a lot of super-useful things Enable can do with one of the most stable database engines for its time. Its Procedural Language is nothing to sneeze at. The unfinished dot .popup command can be used to advantage. Not to speak of its .exec_dos command to issue command line instructions to other applications. And more.
Francis,
How old is the page
quoted below? Thanks, Carl Underwood Cambridge Developmental Center
Carl:
How nice to hear from an oldtime Enable afficionado. To answer your question, the page is a year old or less. You found it on some search engine or other -- which was my intent -- because at the moment the words Enable OA which were tiny but at least visible are no longer visible on the OhSaratoga.com homepage [aka scripturewall.com]. That was just because I needed to rush other content onto the homepage and didn't take the time to include the tiny Enable OA. in the upper right hand corner.
But I knew no one was going to trip over it there anyway, that they would likely find it in a search engine, and so I listed it on most of my pages as a KeyWord. You're the first one to respond.
My site has nothing to do with Enable software, programming, etc. [it monitors the August Oh Saratoga! event [Saratoga Co. being Enable's old homeground at Northway Ten] but the entire event is tracked by Enable OA and the print versions of the website content are generated by Enable, the finances are kept on an Enable SS. Plus more.
I don't have the heart to abandon Enable OA for the latest and greatest. It's been too good to me. And still meets a lot of my needs. Even in the old days I was doing things with Enable [e.g. few would heed when I described how an Enable report form, with an embedded opening macro, could self-execute as a database - I use the method to this day, among other things, to generate randomly colored multi-colored shells for news reports in Mozilla composer.]
If only Enable Software had lasted another couple years so the .popup command could have been perfected and the communications module [which I don't install] adapted to urls and ftps. As is, the popup command is nothing to sneeze at.
I remember you on the BBS but are you one of the C programmers? I'm not a programmer but I sure wish someone could pick up on the source code and take it to the next level. Because of the web most programming now seems to be writing scripts. But what is Enable's procedural language only a script? So the world caught up with the procedural languages.
You seem to be working at the federal level [I note the "us" in your email address]. I was in Columbus in July.
Talk to me. /francis g. mccloskey
I still have EnableOA cut 65something? running on a single Dell PC with NT4 for a Client Funds accounting application. Nightly, I run a script that copies the data over to a network share and from there I (manually) import it into a MySQL database for reporting by the users via Apache & PHPSeems to me you could eliminate some of those intermediate steps. Since I'm not sure how you have the network set [it seems you are saying the Dell is a standalone [not on the network] and that your script copies OA output [probably formatting it for MYSQL entry but anyway you manually import it. I not sure if "manually" means you key it in, but I suspect the script is input to MYSQL.]
Therefore I'll just imagine a situation where I've got both Enable OA and MYSQL running on the same system or same network under some version of Windows and I need to use Enable output as MYSQL input.
My approach would be to use OA as a front end. It's been over two years since I fed my standalone Apache/MYSQL but I remember enough to be fairly sure of what I'm saying. Plus I use OA to issue commands to other applications using OA output as input parameters.
With its .exec_dos command OA can send MYSQL valid syntax commands to take and process OA output. Enable's menus integrate so well with its own output scripts [via the .macro {Do Menu} command] that one could totally customize the menus to the task at hand. With some tips and tricks I discovered, Enable menus can point and shoot at dynamic data tables output and use the selected output as a parameter for another application.
For Enable to be able to read the MYSQL return codes would require the codes be captured to a file. Enable can read the output [ASCII] file and be scripted to parse the return codes and respond accordingly. The output file needs to be in 8.3 format. I'll respond to the rest of your most welcome missive in a followup message. /fgm
Hello, I too am an old user of Enable OA. I probably have in excess of 100,000 lines if procedural language running a point-of-sale system and A/R for my hardware in Michigan. Would love to know if there is a chat group running. I’ve got Enable running on my terminal server with network printing going to remote offices (runs great!!!!). Currently have 14 key codes, but are in need of potentially 10 more. When they closed their NY office I purchased 5 more thinking that at the time it was a lot of keys.
There is now an Enable forum thanks to Peter Wargo.
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