Sending Keystrokes

From a previous post I was advised that sending keystrokes should be used as a last resort. I followed the other info in the reply and found that my ACCESS work was almost instant and was accurate. I now have another question that hopefully will keep me from having to use keystrokes.

I'm using Cognos Impromptu to drag data tables from Oracle Financials so I write ad hoc queries against them in ACCESS. I figured out how to make the Impromptu queries run using keystrokes to do the following:

1 Open Impromptu
2 Open a catalog
3 Run a query
4 Save the output to a dbf file
5 Close the query

Considering I've had the software for a week, I felt pretty proud of that until I realized there's a problem I can't seem to overcome. I have to send {WAIT} commands to tell the system how long to wait on the previous step to finish but, depending on network speed, that time could vary greatly. Can I run the queries some other way?

Thanks,
Shawn

I am not familiar with Impromptu, other that I know this is just a reporting tool and nothing more. The described process sounds way too complicated to me. Instead of using a simple linked table feature in Access (1 step process) you are using third-pretty reporting tool to run a query, then save results into an intermediate file, which format is not native to Oracle, Impromptu and Access and has serious data limitations (simple put DBF format is 20 years old) and then you load this file into Access and do something else. Not only you have no way to know how long this processing is going to take and you dependent on a bunch of other unpredictable factors, but you also attempt to run this complicated process using unreliable keystroke sending features. I don't mean to offend anybody, but the current implementation of the process should be abandoned without hesitation as quickly as possible. It may work for another few days before it fails. The consequences could be pretty serious too.

So assuming that the described process is a non-starter, here is what I suggest. In Access setup links for your Oracle database tables, for details please see "linked tables" feature in the Access docs. Design simple SQL queries to access/use data in the linked tables as required. No waits, not complex process manipulations, no keystrokes needed.

There is only one caveat, ensure that Access uses pass-through queries option and doesn't attempt to bring the entire remote table contents for local data processing. Queries should be designed with this in mind.

Hope this suggestion helps.