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Chapter 3. Example of an ACIF Application in AIX
The line-data application used as the example in this section is shown in Figure 10
on page 54. The application generates telephone bills. The objective is to make the
billing application output available on customer service representatives’
workstations. Then, when a customer calls with a billing inquiry, the representative
can view the bill in the same format as the customer’s printed copy.
To do this, you must convert the output from your application into a document
format that can be used with the Viewer application of AFP Workbench (Workbench
Viewer). You also must index the file to facilitate searching the file with Workbench
Viewer. To ensure that all resources used in the bills are available at the
workstation, you must use the resource retrieval function of ACIF.
Your tasks include:
1. Examining the input file to determine how to tag it for viewing
2. Specifying ACIF parameters for indexing and resource retrieval for either ASCII
or EBCDIC input data
3. Identifying the locations of the resources used when the bills are printed
4. Determining the form definition and page definition used to print the bills
5. Running the ACIF job
6. Concatenating the index object file, the resource file, and the document file
7. Making the document file available to a workstation running Microsoft Windows
for viewing with Workbench Viewer
Note: This example is hypothetical; an input file is
not
actually provided. The
example is intended only to help you understand how ACIF may be
used for an actual application, and to assist you when you use ACIF for
your own application. For practical use, you must provide your own
input file, and specify paths, directories, and so forth, as they apply to
your particular installation and application.
The following topics are covered in this section:
An example of an input file
Specifying ACIF processing parameters for ASCII input data
Specifying ACIF processing parameters for EBCDIC input data
Identifying the locations of the specified resources
Determining the form definition and page definition resources needed to format
and print the ACIF job
How to run the ACIF job
The output files created by running the ACIF job
Concatenating the output files
Accessing the document file from a workstation for viewing
Copyright IBM Corp. 1993, 1999 53