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Spectrum Writer Overview of Features
Chapter 1. About Spectrum Writer
Chapter Table of Contents
What is Spectrum Writer?
Why You Need Spectrum Writer
Spectrum Writer Pays for Itself Fast!
Spectrum Writer Features
What Is Spectrum Writer?
Spectrum Writer is a program that makes it easy to produce custom reports and
files from your company's existing mainframe data.
With Spectrum Writer at your fingertips, both your end-users and your boss will
soon be amazed and delighted with your quick results. And you'll have the
satisfaction of accomplishing more than ever before -- with less effort!
Why You Need Spectrum Writer
Easy New Production Reports
The reports produced by Spectrum Writer look every bit as professional as those
produced by individual report programs. Titles are perfectly centered. Column
headings are neatly aligned above the data, and underlined. At control breaks,
totals are aligned under the numeric columns, with the name of the break field
clearly identified. This attention to detail means you can use Spectrum Writer to
quickly produce your regular production reports. Its usefulness is not limited to
ad hoc reports.
Fast One Time Queries
Spectrum Writer is also great for those frequent "one shot" requests. Now you'll
be able to satisfy requests that there just wasn't time for without Spectrum Writer.
You'll wonder how you ever got along without it.
Delight Your PC End Users
When the users would really prefer to manipulate the mainframe data themselves,
Spectrum Writer allows you to give it to them in PC format. The users can then
process the mainframe data however they like in their spreadsheet, database or
word processing program. And the programmers can get back to programming.
Spectrum Writer delights PC users with many exciting new possibilities. With
mainframe data in their PCS, they'll be able to:
- perform "what if" calculations in PC spreadsheets
- maintain their own PC database, for personal access or LAN use
- print high quality graphics on laser printers
- create color graphics, overhead transparencies and slides for fabulous
presentations
Spectrum Writer's PC files also make it easy for you to provide mainframe data
to people without access to your mainframe. Just e-mail the PC file to your
offices around the world.
Web Reports for your "Paperless Office"
Spectrum Writer can format your reports especially for viewing on Web browsers
(such as Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator.) You can put such reports on
your company's Intranet or Internet site for easy company-wide (or public)
viewing. Or, send the report to your colleagues as an e-mail attachment that they
can automatically view from their e-mail reader. Spectrum Writer is a powerful
tool in the move toward paperless "enterprise" reporting.
Perfect for Downsizing Applications
Use Spectrum Writer for one time file conversions needed when downsizing
mainframe applications to run on PC systems. Spectrum Writer converts the
packed, binary, and bit fields to the kind of ASCII data that is needed on the PC
system.
Reduce Your CPU Usage
We hate to mention this, but some report writers are real "CPU Hogs." No
wonder many systems programmers tremble when programmers develop new
applications with them. But, because Spectrum Writer is written entirely in
efficient assembly language, its reports run amazingly fast.
In many cases, there is no significant difference between Spectrum Writer's run
time, and the run time of a COBOL program written to produce the same report.
And when you consider the CPU cycles saved in development (fewer compiles,
test runs, debugging, etc.), Spectrum Writer can actually lighten the load on your
CPU.
Reduce PC Download Time and Hard Disk Usage
Spectrum Writer's PC files reduce download time and hard disk usage by letting
you download only the data you actually need (not the entire mainframe file.)
Why tie up a PC for hours downloading records and fields that won't even be
used?
Some PC based products require you to download entire reports to the PC.
Then, the PC program must process the entire, gigantic report just to extract the
few lines of data that the PC user may actually need. Spectrum Writer lets you do
the extraction on the mainframe, before you download the data.
Spectrum Writer Pays for Itself Fast!
Spectrum Writer quickly pays its own way in a shop maybe even the first time
you use it!
Spectrum Writer greatly increases programmers' productivity. It slashes the
programming effort required to create new reports and PC files by 90% or more.
That means more completed projects, in less time, without an increase in staff.
And if Spectrum Writer eliminates the need, even once, to bring in contract
programmers to relieve overburdened staff -- you'll recover its cost from that
alone.
Spectrum Writer also increases the productivity of your PC users. If they are
manually entering data now, the time savings from automating that will be
enormous. But even if you have an existing download application, Spectrum
Writer reduces the "dead time" associated with it. You'll eliminate the wasted
time spent downloading unnecessary data. And you'll shift much of the slow
sorting and number crunching functions from the PC back up to the mainframe.
You'll recover all the productivity your shop is losing every day to idle time when
PC users are just waiting on their PCS. And with Spectrum Writer, there are no
expensive PC components to purchase and maintain. All you need is Spectrum
Writer and your existing file transfer facility.
Add together the cumulative value of the hours saved by the programming staff
and your end users. You'll see that it won't take long to recoup your small
investment in Spectrum Writer.
Spectrum Writer Features
Spectrum Writer has the following main features:
- control statements use an easy, free format, English-like syntax that's
easily learned by non-technical users
- allows long, user-friendly field names (unlike some report writers that
restrict you to cryptic 8-byte names)
- you can easily combine data from flat files, VSAM files and DB2
tables
- use your existing COBOL or Assembler record layouts instead of
creating a data dictionary. Or, use Spectrum Writer's simple data
dictionary for added functionality.
- no data definition required for DB2 tables -- Spectrum Writer
accesses the definition from your DB2 system
- produces efficient internal machine code that is easy on your CPU
- formats output files into many standard PC formats, so that
mainframe data can be easily imported into PC spreadsheet, database,
word processing and presentation programs
- produces output files for mainframe or Unix applications
- automatically produces HTML-formatted Web reports
- report lines are not limited to 132 characters. Spectrum Writer can
format a report as wide as your laser printer will support.
- automatically prints bar graphs
- ability to print full-page forms
- ability to skip to a new sheet of paper at control breaks (not just the
next "page")
- has a logical default for every aspect of the report, from the report
titles, to how to format numeric and date fields, to the Grand Total
line
- allows complete control over formatting of numeric fields, including
handling of special cases like telephone numbers, social security
numbers, etc.
- lets you format dates in any of over 40 different ways
- allows complete control over report titles, column headings, and
footnotes
- has a "forgiving" error philosophy that results in at least a partial
report almost every try
- has thorough, clear documentation, including a User's Guide in non-technical language for end-users
- validity-checks numeric data before processing it, so that no S0C7
abends occur
- ability to display file data in hexadecimal format, for analyzing
invalid data
- converts fields from ASCII to EBCDIC and vice verse
- special features for speedy report development, such as limiting the
number of records processed, or the number of report lines printed
- supports full "boolean logic" (the use of AND, OR and NOT) in
conditional expressions
- ability to scan free format fields, to look for a certain text anywhere
within the field
- comparisons and computations are allowed between any numeric
fields, regardless of their differing data type or decimal precision in
the input file
- comparisons are allowed between any date fields, regardless of their
differing formats in the input file
- supports dates with 2-digit or 4-digit years
- supports windowing to handle 2-digit years after the year 2000
- lets you create your own new fields, optionally assigning different
values depending on one or more conditions
- supports every imaginable type of mainframe data, including over 30
kinds of date fields, and over 20 kinds of time fields
- full mathematical calculations are supported when creating new
fields, including the use of many built-in functions
- supports full range of functions to manipulate string data, including
powerful parsing features
- "compress" formatting feature lets you, for example, compress
separate city, state and ZIP fields into a normal address line format
- lets you use data from existing mainframe reports (rather than
mainframe files) in PC programs
- handles complicated record layouts, including variably located fields,
fields located by pointer or pointer expressions, etc.
- supports records that contain arrays with varying number of entries
- lets you specify your own spreadsheet column headings, or use
defaults
- easily summarizes data
- automatically computes statistics (such as total, average, maximum,
minimum)
- allows an unlimited number of input files in a single run
- allows an unlimited number of control breaks
- allows an unlimited number of print lines per input record
- allows complete customization of control breaks
- allows complete customization of Grand Totals at end of report
- built-in fields provide the system date, time, jobname, etc.
- can limit input file processing to a certain key range, to eliminate
unnecessary I/O
- user exit interfaces for any special handling required at the field or
record level
- provides end of job statistics, such as how many records read from
each input file, and how many records included in the report
Proceed to Chapter 2. Report Writing Examples
Return to Booklet Table of Contents
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