Does anyone have any recommendations for printing a report from webMethods to a networked printer (via a TCP/IP connection)?
The user wants a simple “ticket” to print on a network printer when a particular error condition occurs. For example, when an order is received and the asset is not found (and needs to be setup) a ticket would be printed that would inform the user to setup the asset and execute the order.
Any suggestions are appreciated!
You will need to write a java service to do whatever printing you want to do.
If you are using the broker, what I would suggest is to define a broker document with all of the fields that define your error condition, and publish it when one of these errors occur. Then have a service that subscribes to your document, and calls a java service to do the actual printing. If it can be done in java, it can be done in webMethods.
Have you consider sending the event to an e-mail gateway and then having a rule in the e-mail host that prints any e-mail(s) to a particular client. This would potentially take care of any formating issues that you may have to do if you were to write a Java service. Also there are a large number of Java samples out there (on the 'Net) that allows you to transform output data to a postscript object that you could send to a printer (if the printer can handle it).
Also do you need to consider authentication and authorisation when sending directly to an IP based printer? (Again - you have to consider this in your solution that you finally deliver).
There is a service available with PSUtilities that allows you to perform an OS command or script from a IS. It is called PSUtilities.misc.makeSystemCall