As we have discussed in previous blogs, aXes has several features in addition to being a graphical application which converts 5250 RPG and COBOL programs to rich internet applications. It also has a Spool File Explorer.
The aXes Spooled File Explorer allows a user to access spooled file data through a standard browser based interface. The Power i spools outputs to an out queue, which can be viewed in a number of formats including PDF, Text, and HTML. Since aXes presents everything in a browser, it can help to make a company and its employees much more mobile and flexible.
Default Page
When the initial web address (URL) is accessed by the user, this default page is displayed. aXes calls this the default page. Once installed, you can configure the webserver to bypass this page and go directly to the aXes Home Page or various aXes sessions.
Home Page
Clicking the link on the default page takes you to the following secured administrative and developer web site. This page shows the various aXes Sessions, Development Projects, aXes Documentation, and Tutorials that are available. Looking at the right hand side menu under the "Launch aXes Sessions" box you will see the "Terminal Session," "Basic Terminal Session," "Development Session," and "Data Explorer Session" that you may be familiar with.
In this short blog, we will navigate to the “Spooled File Session” by selecting the link on the right side of the screen in the blue “Launch sites Sessions”. We will see some of the features that are available.
Spool File Session
Selecting the "Spool File Session" yields a new web page that contains some new results, as represented in the following screen snapshot. You can see the spooled file name, the user that created the file, its status, form type, number of pages, and printer that it’s assigned to, including the date and time that it was generated. This is the same information you can see in the native 5250 terminal session.
If you select the “<<” icon on the left top, it will open a menu that allows you to do a variety of administrative and productive tasks. These are shown on the next few slides.
Spooled File Handling
When the “<<” icon is selected, it opens up the left menus as shown below. It shows a very robust interface for spooled file handling. You can select different out queues and view the spool files in the queues, select different libraries, as well as select tabs for managing commands, options, and attributes. Take a look at a couple of screen snapshots below.
As seen on the options tab, you can select to view the spool files as HTML, Adobe PDF and Text formats. You can also select the columns you want to view for each spool file. There are over 26 different fields that can be selected for viewing.
Thanks to Robert Sweney for providing the material for this blog post.
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