Creation password prompt at runtime

[Joe Chasan]

On Tue, Aug 03, 2004 at 01:20:00AM -0400, John Esak wrote:
> >
> > Which way does it fail a bad password?  Does it error out to a menu, or
> > just fail the lookup?
> >
> > Cheers,
> > -- jra
> > --
> > Jay R. Ashworth
> 
> 
> Actually, if you leave the password thing to happen at Runtime, it is not
> very elegant at all... but how could it be?  I never do this...
> 
> However, if you were to do:
> 
>     @keyT   if:
>           then: ff="payrollfile";  ky=""
>             if:
>           then: lookup try=(ff) k=ky i=a -ng
>             if:
>           then: end
> 
> You get.... the following if you don't know the password....
> 
> 
> *** A filePro Error Has Occurred ***
> 
> On File: /u/appl/filepro/nexpremp/lockfile
> 
> Input Processing
> Line Number: 5
> Incorrect password.?
> 
> Like I said, not very elegant... but what else is there to do?
> I suggest not leaving passwords for runtime.  I do lookups into our
> payroll file all the time so processes can test whether an employee
> is a manager or whatever. There is no need to show or use more of
> the sensitive file than required and putting the password in when you
> sae the processing is no big deal. It doesn't go anywhere... just
> let's you do this kind of thing... which is crucial.

consider, though, the case where you always know the fp filename, but
all you want to change at runtime is the qualifier.  that's where it
really bites me.

because of the lookup syntax, the filename and qualifier must be stuffed
into the variable expression, so the way filepro forces you to do this is
a PITA.  i've seen some systems where there are tons of qualifiers, whether
for years, customers, companies, etc.  if you want a single process that
can span qualifiers and you have a creation password, it becomes a real
pain.  

i can understand ken's logic for the filepro file name, but i think then
that lookup syntax should be able to be lookup joe = filename@(var_qual)
so that changing qualifiers does not fall into same category.

--- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ---
-Joe Chasan-                      Magnatech Business Systems, Inc.
joe at magnatechonline.com           Hicksville, NY - USA
http://www.MagnatechOnline.com    Tel.(516) 931-4444/Fax.(516) 931-1264