SC Auto - basic idiot's guide

[Jones]

Morning,

I have good knowledge or SC but zero knowledge of SC Auto, have been reading up on the documentation, but need some basic questions answering, (please excuse my ignorence on this, but have never used SCAuto)

My colleague has some software which is used for monitoring, the idea is for error messages to be logged on ServiceCenter, he is working on the link from his software out, my bit is to get this info in to ServiceCenter. I understand this can be through connect.it or SCAuto, I think our route would be SCAuto.

Question 1, I guess I would need to use the SCSuto/SDK? as this would be a custom interface

Question 2, Am I right in thinking that basically as long as he can get his software to write in to the event in file (which is called????) (with the data in a character string using a deliminater to seperate the fields) then it can be picked up by a SCAuto external schedular and passed in to the Event Manager, .......and out in the same way?

........any comments would be great thanks,

[PieterVanPetegem]

The SCAuto sdk is in fact a dll that you can import in your own programs.
It contains functions that allow your application to connect to SC and insert eventin records,... .
So basically when the monitoring application wants to log a ticket for a certain error it should use the dll, create a connection and use the function to create an event in the eventin table.

[tommy]

When using the scauto dll the program can write events in the eventin file in sc. sc then processes them and sc can write a response event in the eventout file in sc. The external program can then read the response from the evenout file.

[Jones]

Thanks guys,.... your making things a little clearer!

[Jones]

one other question,... reading through some bits, SC6 apparently has the ability to use soap and XML.

I guess this bypasses the need to use SC Auto, am I right ? or am I just making stuff up now?

[tommy]

No You are correct. SC6.x expose files as Web Services and can utilize available Web Services on intranet or internet.

You would still need license for using Soap.

A third option is to use Connect.It which also supports both Web Services and XML files.

[PieterVanPetegem]

The web services have the advantage that you no longer need events, eventmaps.... so it's a lot faster.
Also webservices allows your external application to retreive the messages like validations that you would receive in the normal client.

[Jones]

Thats great , I appreciate the replies,

[ResidentGenius]

web services ... [is] a lot faster.

Not true. Event Services is much faster (up to 50%) than WebServices. WebServices is the way of the future, but all of my practical experience has indicated that Event Services is faster, while WebServices is the non-proprietary and accepted solution going forward.

[outlance]

I agree! In the Web Services best practise guide this is pointed out explicitely. Web services are not intended for mass data exchange.

Lars

[ResidentGenius]

I should also point out that writing a client replacement tool with WebServices is a violation of your license agreement.