We want to create some integration between with Baan and want to use Baan OpenWorld for that. From the documentation I understood that Baan OpenWorld does not support texts.

Does anyone have experience in creating texts via a BOI in Baan?
Can anyone give me some hints on how to this?
Is there some work-a-round available for this problem??

Thanks in advance,

Youp
:confused::confused:

Hai Youp,
Unfortunately BOI has the limitation and it wont handle the text fields. But there is a way to getaround this problem.

After the BOIBuilder generates the BOI ,u need to customize all the source code including idl file, proxy components and the AFS DLL. The major changes will be required in the AFS dll. Basically I built my own method in the AFS dll and the method handles the textfields of the BOI. Introducing new method requires modification in the proxy components aswellas the idl file.

I have done it for a few fields but its extremely difficult and I spent so many weeks to get the things work. Anyway please let me know what are all the sessions u need to integrate and specific textfields so that I can help u.

Regards,
Jeyaseelan

Hi ,
It was very difficult to go ahead and handle text fields in BCK environment. But with Openworld it is pretty simple to do. Actually the documentation is a bit misleading here. OW supports text handling. Actually there is a special datatype in OW for text fields. bin.base64 or something. What the document means is standard BOIs which are made by Baan will not support it.

If you are a Baan programmer it is kids play to handle Texts in Baan. Just get the value in a string form or in bin.base64 and then in Ur BOI dll go ahead and perform text functions to create text.

Actually I had done this for couple of clients. It is very simpel if you write your own dll's but as mentioned in previous reply if you generate the BOI dll code from BOI builder. It is very complex. Just because BOI builder generated a complex piece of code..:):)

Regards
Sudhir Hasbe
e-Emphasys Tech

Thanx for the replies but to me it is still not completely clear.

First of all let me say that Baan OpenWorld 2.2 will be used for the integration. The Baan application we use is Baan IV c4 so the AFS functionality is used in the BOI DLL.

In the documentation I found the datatype bin.base64 at some places but to me it is not clear how to handle this field in my BOI DLL.

What do you mean with: Just get the value in a string form or in bin.base64 and then in Ur BOI dll go ahead and perform text functions to create text.

I assume I have to do at least the following:
- Create/Adjust the DCD or QCD. If for example I want to create the item text for a standard item I adjust my DCD for the standard item and add here the text field. Should I define it here with datatype bin.base64 or what??
- Adjust the genereated BOI DLL for creating the item. But what do I receive from the XML doc: a string or this bin.base64 format (is this supported by Baan ??). In the reply shasbe says: go ahead and erform text functions to create text so:
* Write result to temporary file
* Use function write.text to create the text
* Store text number

Is this how it should work or am I missing something.

Please help me a little bit further...

Youp

Hi,
I think you got me correct. I did not mention about dcd/qcd as I thought that was part of making changes to the BOI's. Sorry about that.

Here are the steps.
1. Add a new field in DCD. Make the data type as string for now.(You can experiment with bin.base64 later).
2. Then in your BOI Dll go ahead and recieve this field in string and write it to a temp file.
3. Use your Text write funtion to create a text.
4. Then you standard code is going to create your records. At the end you go ahead and add your textnumber to the record.
5. You will have to do error handling and all properly. As it is possoble that your text gets created but records is not and all...

I am not sure about baan supporting it. But I know it works. I have done similar stuff at my client sites and it works fine. People using it are happy.

Basically how can you work with Baan if you can't create text fields. It is easy to say that it will not work in documents but difficult to work with in real life scenarios.

How can someone even imagine having sales orders without a text attachment. I think every customer needs this. So this is the soln with BOIs for text handling.

Regards
Sudhir Hasbe

Thanx again for the reply. I absolutely agree that texts are a 'must have' in Baan. I'm going to experiment a little with your information and see if I can get it to work.

Youp