Kevin, I went through the same process in the late 80's. Only then it was a Wang Mini circa 1978 converting to FileMan. I had the advantage of having written the program (in BASIC), though that wasn't so much the advantage. We used a port interface (fuzzy, but I think telnet capture, or some device on the parallel port) to print (and capture) output to disk. We were using PC with DOS then.
You don't say what OS you are dealing with and your experience with it. However, I think you can find a tool that lets you take the text off a printer port. There are not as many of those gadgets now as we had then, however, you should be able to find something to capture date, if you can print it. Below is one such devices. I don't necessarily recommend it for your application. It is just a demonstration they still make them. http://www.printdistributor.com/print-to-file.html Can you give a little more specs on OS and how much you can control it? Surely you can print some reports with the Cobol program. If you have some familiar OS, it should be fairly easy to get the data our. thurman > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:hardhats- > [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Kevin Toppenberg > Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2005 4:27 PM > To: Hardhats Sourceforge > Subject: [Hardhats-members] COBOL advise needed > > OK, OK, I know this is a M list. But hear me out. > > The December our Mysis contract will expire, which is our old EMR. > The company says that it will be $5,000+ to get the old progress notes > exported. Recently our group voted not to do that, and to just go > forward with our paper printouts of that data (which are already in > our paper charts). > > But I can't help but wonder if I could get the data out myself. I > know that I can do it through printing to a disk instead of printer, > then running it all through a conversion program. But it is certainly > lacking. > > The underlying code is written in cobol -- either RM COBOL or > MicroFocus Cobol (or both). I don't know Cobol, but I gues I could go > learn it... > > So my question, does anyone know enough about cobol to tell me to give > it up now, its too hard. Or that it's just sitting there for easy > picking. Would the cobol be acting as the database itself (as M > does), or would it likely be using some other method of storing. This > technology is circa 1990. > > Thanks > Kevin > > > ------------------------------------------------------- > SF.Net email is Sponsored by the Better Software Conference & EXPO > September 19-22, 2005 * San Francisco, CA * Development Lifecycle > Practices > Agile & Plan-Driven Development * Managing Projects & Teams * Testing & QA > Security * Process Improvement & Measurement * http://www.sqe.com/bsce5sf > _______________________________________________ > Hardhats-members mailing list > Hardhats-members@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members ------------------------------------------------------- SF.Net email is Sponsored by the Better Software Conference & EXPO September 19-22, 2005 * San Francisco, CA * Development Lifecycle Practices Agile & Plan-Driven Development * Managing Projects & Teams * Testing & QA Security * Process Improvement & Measurement * http://www.sqe.com/bsce5sf _______________________________________________ Hardhats-members mailing list Hardhats-members@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members
