PC-WORKSTATION ID ?

[ken tjia]

Dear Alpha Programmer.

My application required the identification of user and
from which "PC" he/she entering the data from.

My idea is to force the log-on menu to go into Window operating system to grab the network's identification computer-name.

Potential to have up to 10 workstations using the application and I am expecting potential problem with low end production workers that tend to play with data entry.
Thus by identifying which computer the data was entered
I am hoping to capture every events on my electronic journal.

Your suggestion and help is greatly appreciated.

Ken Tjia

[JohnZaleski]

RE: PC-WORKSTATION ID ?

Ken,
I believe Peter Wayne has an articl on getting the computer name on his "Alpha Learning" site. I create a table in the same directory on everyone's "C-Drive". Field rules blocak any changing of this record. This table has the user id assigned by me. They cannot log into the app without this directory and table. I keep other values in this table locating "acrobat" and other programs that I call in the app.
John

[Jim Chapman]

RE: PC-WORKSTATION ID ?

Hi John,

>>Field rules blocak any changing of this record

[ken tjia]

RE: PC-WORKSTATION ID ?

Thank you john,

Having reviewed your reply.
I am thinking that all I need to do is to create a "BAT" or "TXT" file at each one of the user's workstation.
say : WORKSTATION_INFO.TXT

And the above text file would contains data as follow:

COMPUTER_ID=BENCH-ONE

then I will use xbasic to read individual c: drive for
file = workstation_info.txt and move it to a variable
and use that variable forever until the PC-lock up one day hi.

So I would need a simple set up routine at each one station to do this one time identification set up process and Alph 5 will write the Workstation_id.txt into the root c: of that particular pc.

Hmm.. There may be better suggestion, but my idea above if work out would allow greater flexibility to create unique idnetification on multi user station.

In addition, I have production worker who does not read English and having another line in there to switch my application to a secondary foreign language is a desiarable
thing for my application.

Yes, there are many ways to do foreign languages with Alpha5

Ken Tjia

[JohnZaleski]

RE: PC-WORKSTATION ID ?

Jim,
After I assign the terminal value in the table, I disallow changes in the "canchangerecord" event in field rules. Although the users are not even aware of this table's existence, if someone manages to get into the table, they can't add,delete,change or mark the single record in the table.
John

[ken tjia]

RE: PC-WORKSTATION ID ?

yes..the idea of using a XXX>txt file in each of the pc's root drive work really

And Alpha will create/write_line the data to my STATION.TXT
when we initially set up individual workstation.

And we will do a READ.FILE at the start up.

[Leon Brachman]

RE: PC-WORKSTATION ID ?

Last year I had a similar request from a client with about 30 workstations entering information. We thought about identifying the work station, but decided that this could be somewhat ambiguous. That is, you could have different people using the same workstation at different times - say on different shifts, or different days, or whatever.

So we ended up creating a user file - with the user name, password, and whatever other information you want. Nobody can get at it except the administrator, who assigns all the information. And no user can get on the system without identifying himself/herself, using the correct password, etc.

Then you can easily include the "enterer" information as one field in the data base - so you can identify who messed up what, or whatever.

The point of this memo is that you really need to identify the person, not just the workstation.

Leon Brachman [email protected]

[csda1]

RE: PC-WORKSTATION ID ?

Leon,

While you bring up a good point. let me point out that you need all the information of who and where and when to track users. The who is the user login, the where is the physical system where people accessed the computer and when is the date and time they logged on and off

All of the above information I can get in a roundabout way (DOS program) in Alpha 5 version 4.x, but the DOS boxes have some issues. In version 5, the Windows API's are more reliable, and thus I use calls from XBasic to do it there.

User name, computer name are the most important, workgroup, and IP address may be important.

Regards,

Ira J. Perlow
Computer Systems Design & Associates
[email protected]

[ken tjia]

RE: PC-WORKSTATION ID ?

Thank you for your comment.

The STATION.TXT work so well all morning and i allow
up to 30 charcaters to describe workstation name.
In place of the PC's nteworking name.

Yes, I agree about the API is more reliable and more
protection is the way to say I think.

The only one thing I need to be sure is the "variable" mixed up on mulsti user...I am afraid being a GLOBAL
from one work-ps may show up on others ?

Will have to wait until late this afternoon to see that effect. In addition, every activities get tarpped into electronic journal and that work really well.

Been thinking about dumping the Journal to SQL and let it
repricate across the country and having backup in 2 cities ?
And leaving the working data locally

ANy comment