Legacy data in Clipper. Clipper program written to extract report data to 1-2-3 spreadsheets one period at time. RPG program written involving a single table that contains the columns to store the names of four of the 1-2-3 spreadsheets. User of RPG program populates the four columns with 1-2-3 spreadsheet names. 400 then issues an RPC call to launch MS Excel and load a workbook with an "Auto_Open" macro. The XL macro connects via ADO to the table populated by the RPG program to get the names of the 1-2-3 spreadsheets to "update" (i.e. mangle the numbers in them). Then the XL macro does a "save as webpage..." and writes the files back to a share on the 400. The XL macro then issues an RPC call back to the 400, calling another RPG program that ftp's the XL generated XML over to the intranet server sitting right beside the machine running the XL macro.

Lesson: "See, the 400 is an integral part of what we do."

Back at ya ;0)