Sletten Kenneth W KPWA wrote: > [snip] This feature includes what was for many years >a separate request on the SIGRAPID enhancement list: The ability >to defer database opens until a particular database is actually >needed by a database access verb. Do you know if this will work for MPE files as well? I've been using Transact lately to prep some Image information for display on a browser but I ran into a couple of very annoying problems. 1. Transact opens all referenced databases and files when the program starts. Therefore, the filename in the system statement is a fixed entity. Yes, you can use file equations but that doesn't help when you are using uniquely named message files as communication pipes back to a browser. I wonder if the enhancement will give you the ability to tell Transact the filename *after* the system statement - say, when you've dug it out of the info string with the getinfo intrinsic. For now I'm using HPFOPEN and FWRITE which means I can't use Transact's built-in file writing abilities. 2. I cannot call a Transact program from *any* process in a CGI context under the Apache web server. I tried HPCICOMMAND, TL-CALL-TRANSACT and CREATEPROCESS but with each I get the same result -- tombstone. I CAN call a Transact process from the POSIX shell in a POSIX directory. Only fails in the CGI context. This is a bummer because Transact is so good at Image processing. In fact, because Transact is so good at Image processing, I created a COBOL program to run under a job whose sole purpose is to spawn a Transact process on the browser's behalf. Message files are used to communicate between the browser and the spawned Transact program. I would have never considered going through all that trouble except that the alternative for me was attempting to emulate recursion in COBOL -- something Transact does with ease. The difference in lines of code would have probably been tens instead of hundreds (assuming I could ever figure out how to do the recursion with COBOL which is doubtful). Now if I could just get around the CGI problem, I would do all my web stuff with Transact. -- Brad Feazell