Does Quovadx support an ftp tool?

[Steve Pringle]

We’re looking for a more robust solution to ftp’ing files (for batch jobs) than a ksh script provides.  After a search on the web it looks like an excellent solution is kermit (see http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/ftpscripts.html).  One major drawback for us – it’s not well supported on unix systems.

Does Quovadx support a similar tool, one we could use for ftp scripting, to automate an ftp session?

If this isn’t the right place to be asking this question please let me know where I should be asking this.  I was going to send an email to Quovadx support, but on the Quovadx web site Cloverleaf->Product Support sends you here, to Clovertech!  I guess you can’t send email to Quovadx Cloverleaf support.  

thanks,

Steve Pringle

Topic

[David Barr]

I’ve had a love-hate relationship with Kermit over the past few years as we have used it with Cloverleaf on AIX.  I’ve received pretty good support for the product from its developers.  I really dislike the scripting language that Kermit uses.  I’m not sure why they found it necessary to make up a new language to use with their software rather than using an existing language.  This makes it more difficult to find developers that can support any complex Kermit scripts that you write, and as a developer, it makes it more difficult to switch back and forth with your scripting languages all the time.

There are zillions of ways that you can automate an FTP transfer under AIX.  One of the simplest ways is to install Curl and use a Curl command in your script to transfer the file.  You can check the exit status of the program to check for any kind of errors.

Cloverleaf also ships with a product built on TCL that is called Expect.  This can allow you build TCL scripts that interact with the command line FTP client.  You can build your own error handling into your scripts.

Also, is there any reason that you aren’t just using an FTP protocol thread to do the transfers?

If you select “help/about” in the Cloverleaf application, you can get the support e-mail address: support@quovadx.com .

[Charlie Bursell]

If you need to do more with FTP than is offered by the built-in protocol, your best bet, IMHO, is the FTP package that is part of tclllib.  The latest tclllib (tcllib1.10) is avaialble for download at: http://sourceforge.net/projects/tcllib/

I would agree that Kermit can be a pain.  Expect, built on Tcl, is good but since, by it’s nature, it blocks, cannot be run within Cloverleaf.  You would have to write an external script and call it from Cloverleaf.

cURL is great, especially for Web-Based projects.  But doing your own FTP can be somewhat arcane with cURL.  FWIW, Cloverleaf uses cURL for it’s FTP protocol.

Unless you have some requirements not handled from within the Cloverleaf FTP protocol, I would use it.

[Steve Pringle]

First I’d like to thank David and Charlie for their help with this issue.

Our ksh ftp scripts vary in complexity.  Some do archiving, others simply ftp.  For the scripts that only ftp it seems using the Cloverleaf FTP protocol is a good solution.  I tried setting up 2 threads to test this, but did not meet with success.  I am new to Cloverleaf so that’s a factor.  What I tried to do is have thread 1 (T1) send files to thread 2 (T2) and T2 ftp the files.

Thread1 (T1) protocol is fileset-Local and seems to work fine, in that it grabs the files, sends them to T2, deletes the files in the source location. T2 protocol is fileset-FTP, but it’s not clear what to set the Outbound properties to for ftp’ing multiple files.  I’ve tried different settings but no success.  

Does anyone have a working sample they could post or send me?

many thanks,

Steve

[David Barr]

If you want to set the outbound filename differently for different files, you probably need to write some TCL code.  You can leave the filename blank in the protocol configuration.  In an outbound TPS proc, you can use code something like this:

Code:

set driverctl [msgmetaget $mh DRIVERCTL]
keylset driverctl FILESET.OBFILE $filename
msgmetaset $mh DRIVERCTL $driverctl

You probably want to be setting the remote filename to the same file that you read on the inbound thread.  I’d send you an example of how we’re getting the inbound filename, but the code we are using looks a little bit nonstandard.

[Steve Pringle]

Thanks David – I’ll try this when I have some spare cycles and let you know the results.

[Author]

Replies