FONTAIC <[log in to unmask]> asks about automating download/importing of data
into an Access database.  The solutions that have been presented so far
leave the HP 3000 in control.  As it happens, I've been doing some research
and investigation into Windows-based scripting this week.  If it is okay to
have some of the control happen on the Windows platform, the following
might be a nice solution (I don't have MS Access so I cannot test this).

Microsoft has released a Windows scripting language called Windows
Scripting Host.  According to Microsoft this is bundled with Windows 98 and
will be bundled with Windows NT 5.0.  But you can download this tool from:

     http://msdn.microsoft.com/scripting/

I've been spending some time this week playing with it (you write scripts
in either JavaScript or VB Script).  It appears to be a pretty powerful
scripting tool.  I've been testing it on both Windows 95 and Windows NT.
With Windows Scripting Host you could:

1.  Check to see if the HP 3000 had downloaded the comma-delimited file.
If a new copy was present, you
    would invoke MS Access as an OLE Automation object and load the file.

2.  Alternatively, you could do the ftp transfer from the Windows platform
and then invoke MS Access.

Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT all have schedulers, so that you
could schedule the script to automatically start nightly or whenever was
appropriate.  All platforms also have a command-line FTP interface, which
we have found to be very reliable.  I thought I would mention this
approach, since it is different than the other ones that I saw in last
night's digest.

Cheers,

David     <[log in to unmask]>