7.0

Like with every other emulation, it is possible to send a PlanetPress Design document set up to use the
database emulation to a printer. But contrary to documents that use the other emulations, you cannot send a
raw data file to the document and expect the document and data to merge and print automatically. In this
case someone or something must query the database and extract the data that will populate the PlanetPress
Design document.
We can imagine two basic scenarios. In the first one, we can imagine someone in a print shop who needs to
use data from a database to print a bunch of personalized letters using PlanetPress Design. That person opens
a PlanetPress Design document and uses the Data Selector to select a database. By making a connection to
the database, its structure can be accessed and it becomes possible to determine how data is to be pulled into
PlanetPress Design. The process actually pulls data into PlanetPress Design and lets the print shop employee
visualize and print the data on the personalized letters.
The second scenario involves PlanetPress Watch/Server. In this case, a PlanetPress Watch/ServerPlanetPress
Database action task takes the place of the print shop employee and performs the database query
automatically. The task generates a PlanetPress Design compatible data file that it passes to the following
task, be it another action task, or any output task.
Bear the following in mind:
• The person or plugin performing the query must have full access to the database.
• The data is extracted at the time of the query. A new query must be performed whenever the data
needs to be updated.
• Any changes to the structure of the database may have an impact on automated data querying tasks.
• You must have the proper ODBC driver installed to use this emulation.
Database emulation supports SQL ANSI 92 or higher, and supports the following data types: string, integer,
floating point, all date formats, and text-only MEMO. It does not support any binary data types such as Binary
Large Object (BLOB), images, sound files, and MEMO data that includes binary data.
Database emulation requires version 2.5 or higher of Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC), including
JET 4.0, and you can save database emulation configurations to a file.
7.2.8 User-Defined Emulation
In user-defined emulation, you use PlanetPress Talk commands to define how you want the document to treat
the input data. You use this emulation when the structure of your input data prevents you from using any of
the other emulations. You must ensure the emulation you create handles any variations in the data properly
and under all circumstances.
In user-defined emulation, the document reads the data stream one line at a time. After it reads a line, it
places all the characters in that line in a string variable. You use PlanetPress Talk commands to specify how
the document handles the contents of this variable.
Note that when a user-defined emulation is used, whenever you request a data page that is passed the last
data page, the last data page will be displayed.
Selecting an Emulation - Emulation
Objectif Lune Inc. © 2009 72