STOP and ESCAPE

[Halfthumb]

Is it possible to have a "Stop and Escape" button to exit the Robot while it's churning?

Paul B

[km]

Paul, I moved your post into the Robot forum so it would get more attention as it is a good question

Use the Windows terminate [x] top right corner, to stop the Robot in progress. Click it over and over until Windows closes it.

It is MUCH SAFER to allow Windows to close the Robot than for me to do it in the software. This is because the Robot is in the middle of high intensity I/O on your hard drive. For me to add an Abort button might be the equivalent of pulling the plug on your computer while it's in the middle of something. Not good if it could cause a problem or mess up the hard drive.

It is possible to write code that calls on Windows to do the same thing using a "Stop" or "Abort" button from the screen, but the end result is the same as clicking the [x]. It takes time to slow down the hard drive while it's working a maximum speed as the Robot demands of it.

[njcurveball]

I don't know if this is possible, but where I work we have some messages we throw users when they plug in a very large query.

Something like "Your query will return a million records, please be patient, or hit cancel".

Sounds like this might just be a case of winding up with too many records to crunch.

Oracle isn't "nice" about this either. Once the query starts, best to shut down the whole program then try figure out how to program a break. The reason is Oracle will not look for the break code until it is done with the query. If we programmed it to look for a break code after every record, the query would take 10 times as long.

Jim

[Huguenot]

Ken,
here's another question:

When you first start the Robot it shows you the progress in making its way through the data. But if you hit a button on your keypad -- or sometimes if you do nothing at all -- the "countdown" freezes even as the processing continues I like seeing the progress of the data collection as that will give me an idea on how long the query will take. Otherwise I'm pretty much in the dark.

Is there any way to keep Robot from freezing up the "countdown".

[km]

I coded the Robot to move as quickly as your computer and hard drive can handle it. This means sacrificing the refresh rate on the screen that displays the counter. Otherwise we'll wait even longer for an 'all burger' to finish.

Many users never see the "freeze" because they have bought high-end monitors with faster refresh rate (always listed in the specs on the box) and/or super efficient hard drives. Consider one or both hardware upgrades for improved Robot performance.

[sly7449]

Greetings,

Currently the default for Test Days is ALL. Failure on the Users' end to adjust such Range will lead into a long Penalty. That is if you did not intend to run All. Such a mistake puts the User on the extreme end of Processing Time.

Could it be beneficial if the Default is set to the Minimum (10 Days) as opposed to the Maximum?

Idea.

Thanks

Sly

[km]

I'll think of something to allow the user to back out of a Robot test. But I don't want to reset the "All" to "10" days as a default because this will cause users who are used to the current setting to get an unexepcted short test and then they'll have to reset the days and restest anyway.
Maybe a save option to hold that "10" as a default setting if you wish.

thanks Sly