How to give Quiz good answers for email
June 26, 2017
HP 3000 manager John Sommers needs help with his Quiz reports. They used to work through the mails, but now they're not being delivered.
"I used to have Quiz send its output to users directly from the HP 3000," he said in a message to me. "I'm not sure how else to attach files to an electronic message in an automated fashion and distribute them. It might not have been pretty and fancy, but it was 110 percent functional and reliable."
Email and the HP 3000 don't have a close relationship by 2017. A few weeks ago we traced the options for emailing on the HP 3000 and saw that Netmail 3000 from 3k Associates is still supported and working in some datacenters. That's as good as HP 3000 email will get today. There's also Sendmail inside of the HP 3000 OS (plenty of configuration needed there) and a few other free options. Sommers' request is different, though. He didn't need his 3000 to distribute the mail. He needs email to distribute 3000 data -- in specific, Quiz reports.
Our newest sponsor Hillary Software has offered software for a long time that will do this. Well seasoned, byRequest is, and it works with enterprise servers across the Unix, Linux, and Windows worlds, as well as MPE/iX. Forms are another area where the 3000's data goes out to work, and Hillary's got forms software. Minisoft also has a forms solution it has customized and tailored for individual applications like QAD, SAP, Oracle, as well as strong links to the HP 3000 and application suites like MANMAN.
The HP 3000 will always have some link to the rest of the IT world, so long as it carries enterprise-grade data. Gateway programs like byRequest and eFormz make that data work. Quiz might seem like it's not pretty or fancy, but the reporting software was scattered across the 3000 world like apple seeds when ERP was called MRP and MANMAN was new. It has that 110 percent functional advantage, too.