Lynn Brown said:
Good day
I am hoping that somebody out there can help me. At my location, we use
ARTS (Action Request Tracking System), which is basically a large Access
database (in my opinion).
When you say "basically", you're using a pretty generalized term here. Why
not fire up MS access and see if you can open up the file, it'll take you
all less time then it it took to type the above "assumpton". Opening up the
database with accesss and looking at the data inside would give you some
ideas as to how they store some of the templates and word information.
The programmers have inserted word documents as the reports.
The is not very clear here. Are you telling me that you use MS word to
create templates and reports inside of this application, and then these
templates are used for generation of reports ? Or are you telling me they
have some built in customer editor that lets you type in text, and that
system then generates words docuemnts? The two approaches are grand canyon,
mount Everest different types of approaches here.
It's quite common for many commercial applications to output their data into
what we call "rich text format". if you don't have any other application on
a computer that is a rich text editor, then usually clicking on one of the
resulting files will launch word. you can usually tell this by looking at
the file extension of the document or in your case the so called report, if
it's .doc, then the chances are better that is likely is it true word
document, on the other hand if the file extension is .rtf, that it's a rich
text file that word simply being used to view that resuling output from the
program.
If you're using a custom internal built in editor, then you're not using
word internally at all in the program. So, how the system stores and
maintains and manages that information is anybody's guess. So as mentioned
many commercial applications the generate word documents and templates don't
use internally the word format, but actually use rich text format. This is a
published open standard by Microsoft. Anohter great reason to use RTF
documents is they are significantly smaller in size and use less space than
the equivalent same word document. I written software using for a medical
center and we also used word for the reporting side of things (the data and
softwaqre was runnng on a mainframe). We used rich text for this very
reason - RTF meant that not only could we have smaller documents, but many
other editors and systems other than that of just word could also use and
manipulate the data then.
On the other hand when a pickup the telephone and ask them?
But I am wondering if anybody would know if coding
within the individual Word Document would actually continue on through out
the storage in ARTS.
I know that this request is a shot in the dark, but I thought I would try.
I'm not sure if this request is a shot in the dark or simply a question with
too much speculation, and too many limited details to come up with a
reasonable answer here. As mentioned, you've not even clarified if you edit
the report data using word, or word is just on the output side? If word is
just on the output side, then what are you using to edit the text/data in
the program side? If they are using some internal format, then that format
can could be one of 50 million different file formats.
As I said, we're not even sure if this is even written in MS access - that
then again why not fire up MS access and open it up and see what you find?
Do make a copy of the file case ms-access messes with it. This not a hard
thing to try...
On the other hand why not pick up the telephone and ask them? Picking up the
telephone and calling them is going to take less time than it took you to
type your question. Why specualte about so many things and so many
un-knowns. Just phone them and ask them....how hard is this going to be?
