[ale] OT:Automated Oracle Screen Data Population

[Mark R. Lindsey]

John Armsby at motorola said:
: Where I work, we utilize Oracle (8?) business modules (Engineering,
: Purchasing, Manufacturing, etc.). The interface, believe it or not is a
: telnet session where the user hand keys data into text based forms and
: invokes obscure function keys to enter and retrieve data. It is almost
: identical to the old TSO, IBM mainframe CRT terminals of the 70's and
: early 80's. Disgusting.

These may be applications written in `Oracle Forms'. I believe that they 
sell a package to change these to web applications, but that doesn't 
solve your basic problem.

: SOMEWHERE I remember reading about some utilities which enable the user
: to create programs, scripts, or macros which mimic human entry into this
: type of database environment.

Check out `expect' -- it runs on top of tcl, and has good support for 
automating the use of CUIs (captive user interfaces) like this.




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