Hi,

I have a really urgent Baan question (I have very little Baan knowlegdge) and I would appreciate any help and guidance.

My client is using BaanIV c4 across their enterprise.

We will create data using our RFID equipment and want to send these files in ASCII format and populate them in a database in BAAN.

We have been given strict instructions not to touch the baan system so we need to emulate a session to write to the Baan application. I understand that there are functions available in Baan that we can call on.

Q1) Can I use the Baan BOIs for this, if not what is the best way
Q2) How do I use the functions to send my info to Baan as a session
Q3) Where are the functions located and which ones so that I can send this to the administrator to check if they are available in their application build currently.

I am very new to this and would appreciate as much of detail and advice as possible. I really appreciate your help.

Thanks in advance,

Warmest Regards

Varun

Hi - Lots of questions in that small post. My company provides RFID consulting, so take what I say from that angle :) I hate to advertise on the boards, but hopefully I can shed some light for you. Since you put this under 3rd party product, I feel better about telling about our products.

The Baan DDC is the traditional solution for pure RF handling. There is Baan documentation on createing the 'middleware' that communications between the RF devices and the Baan DDC. You may request the technical specifications from Baan, though they are not so updated. My company and others have this as a third party solution, and have made improvements to the standard Baan DDC process.

The DDC will call 'function servers' in Baan. There are some standard Baan DDC function servers for many common needs, like Hours Accounting, but again, the Baan versions are not so updated. The Standard DDC's are named the same as the session they represent, using a 'b' in the name to represent DDC.
Example:
Hours Accounting standard session name: tihra1101m000
Hours Accounting DDC Function Server Name: tihra1101b000

If you find the standard ones do not meet your needs, companies like mine have a library of supported functions for sale, or you can write your own. There are many different methods of this as well. You can use the traditional DDC generator if you have source, or you can combine this with newer AFS methods to get a more dynamic version of the sessions. This would be part of what is considered BOI technology.

Open World has some standard BOI's provided as well. To confuse matters more, they are also called function servers. The Open World function servers are not required if going the DDC Route, though they can be mixed and matched if you have them available.

A lot of details glossed over. Hope that starts a high level conversation.

I guess to answer the question, you would need to explain the scenario a little better. You mention that you create the data using the RFID equipment, how much data and what kind of data are we talking about? Where does the data need to go, ie what sessions are you referring to? Are they 'passive RFID tags' with only a serial code that must be reference in Baan or are 'active' containing more meaningful data??

There are a number of ways of moving data in and out of Baan, eg. DDC, BOI, exchange - along with less 'Baan friendly' methods such as ODBC direct to the database. The best way depends on what you are trying to achieve.

Have a look at

www.arcgateway.com (http://www.arcgateway.com)
They have experience of reading RFID data into Baan as well as writing tags from Baan via RFID label 'printers'

To answer your specific questions...

Q1) Can I use the Baan BOIs for this,
a1- yes you can, but see a2...
Q2) How do I use the functions to send my info to Baan as a session
a2- you need to call them either from Baan, or from something like a VB program - the question then is how/when is the program started?
Q3) Where are the functions located and which ones so that I can send this to the administrator to check if they are available in their application build currently.
a3- BIOs are in effect 'already there', you can generate the code to unlock the available functions session-by-session using ttstpcreatdll - this is a whole other topic to cover!

Hope that helps

Andy

I just noticed your user profile refers to BaanIVc2.

Just a warning, but DDC was not very reliable in BaanIVc2. I'm not sure if BIOs are available in versions prior to BaanIVc4.