Odystar/MIS Integration

[hermanpeckel]

Folks,

I am fairly new to the whole Odystar thing having just landed a job as IT manager, but already I can see it's potential. Currently we have a few canvases set up, all of which are working well, but are quite linear in design.

All of the information about our jobs is contained in our MIS job database - ie stock, size, designated printer etc etc. What I would like to do is create Odystar gateways that use this data. The name of the PDF (123456.pdf) would relate to the job number in the MIS (Job No. 123456). As the PDF is moving through the canvas and reaches a certain gateway it could then be routed depending on which stock it is going on for instance.

I hope I'm making sense! Can any of you shed any light as to how I'd go about this? Would I query the database at the gateway or would I push an XML file through with the job. I have no idea.

Any help or even any basic hints would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance!
HP

 

[DECH]

Hi hermanpeckel

What you want to do in Odystar is possible, your MIS needs to write a JDF file that contain the Stock attribute and to run with the artwork pdf together into Odystar workflow. In order to get Odystar to work with JDF from MIS, there is an extra module that you will need to buy.

I wil get in contact with you later regards to this in details.

 

[Simon Ivarsson]

Im not an expert on Odystar, but if you migrate to Automation Engine, both xml and jdf is possible.
xml is very easy to implement and will give you plenty of possibility's to control your workflows the way you explained.

wkr
Simon
(working for esko)

 

[hermanpeckel]

Sounds great!! Thanks a bunch for the reply guys.

This functionality alone will be reason enough for us to migrate over!!

...and thanks for the email DECH. I'll be checking out the link tonight!

Regards

HP

 

[prepressbb]

Im not an expert on Odystar, but if you migrate to Automation Engine, both xml and jdf is possible.
xml is very easy to implement and will give you plenty of possibility's to control your workflows the way you explained.

You should include that depending on the MIS he is using there will be some limitations, including(using xml, querying from AE to MIS). JDF works great but its pretty costly to setup and all the information placed into the MIS must always be 100% accurate.

 

[hermanpeckel]

Thanks PrepressBB!

I'm assuming we would first try integration via XML and see where we could go with that, and maybe JDF further down the track.

Can you expand on the limitations a bit? I'm assuming you mean you can only have one-way communication with an XML file. I guess this would be a good start at least!

Thanks again for your comments.

Regards
HP

 

[prepressbb]

Yes that is correct one way communication via XML. where as with the JDF you can pass info back and forth between the two. My shop use Automation engine along with label traxx(MIS Software). For us its a bit complicated because we utilize the software to all of its abilities. The ODBC driver for Label Traxx really sucks so retrieving information from label traxx via XML is a bit stressful. What we had to do was to get scripts written for automation engine to retrieve the info from an exported excel document.(exported from MIS). SO IT IS IMPORTANT TO CHOOSE THE RIGHT MIS SOFTWARE. ESKO is great, COSTLY but great and efficient.

 

[hermanpeckel]

Ahhh! Well, I guess that will be ok. Our MIS was developed inhouse so we can normally get some decent XML out of it. Thanks for the advice though! I'm looking forward to getting more out of the software myself. I can see it is definitely capable!

As a side note, is it true that Automation Engine only runs on a Windows platform? We have two XServes setup now for our Odystar workflows. It's going to be a big push to get new hardware for the upgrade. Is there a Mac version on the horizon?

Regards
HP

 

[prepressbb]

there are mac versions already, and have been for a long time. We use automation engine on macs here...Actually the entire design and prepress dept use macs with automation engine to run workflows.

 

[bobbyc]

Client software runs on Mac or Windows. Server is Windows only at the moment.

there are mac versions already, and have been for a long time. We use automation engine on macs here...Actually the entire design and prepress dept use macs with automation engine to run workflows.

 

[prepressbb]

thanks bobbyc for elaborating. That is correct.

 

[hermanpeckel]

Ouch!

Oh well, looks like we may be up for new servers. Thanks for the info folks!

 

[Simon Ivarsson]

There will not be a AE server running on mac OSX, the only way around it is to run it on VMware.
The Pilot runs on both mac / pc