AA vs. VisualBasic vs. Mashups: where to?

[tethysquest]

Hello, I have looked at AA, at the latest "mashup servers," (e.g.: OpenKapow), and have also looked at VisualStudio.Net. I'm not a programmer (yet). I want to take Excel, a few standalone applications, and some websites that have tabular data which I repeatedly retrieve...and automate my use of them.

For example, I want to log into Yahoo Finance, screenscrape a table of stock data, insert that into an Excel spreadsheet, sort it, then take the top five "winners" (per my criteria) and insert them into my online trading program's order-entry screens.

It looks as though I can do all of this with AA, and don't to become a Visual XXX expert, first. I'm willing to spend money and time to avoid a dead-end. Can anyone give me a thumbnail, first-blush opinion as to whether AA has the chops to let me do what I want? Thank you!

[forumsupport]

Hello,

Automation Anywhere can perform this task very well. Using Automation Anywhere , you can scrape data from any application not just web applications. For web data extraction, Automation Anywhere provides you with a powerful tool, Web Recorder. Web Recorder understands all web controls. If websites change and web controls move, Automation Anywhere will find the correct controls and the task will continue to work. You can use this tool to automate any web tasks like login to websites, search for items, submit forms, update records, automate ERP web front end, extract web data, testing an online application etc.

What you can do is:

1) Click on Web Recorder link or Tools->Web Recorder.
2) Enter the website and perform the activities that you want to automate
3) It will open a new browser for Internet Explorer.
4) If your actions involve extracting tabular data, then use the Extract Table button from the toolbar as displayed below. Most of the websites have their data organized in html tables and this feature makes it extremely easy and quick to extract the tabular data into a CSV or any other application.
5) If your actions involve extracting / copying other data like paragraphs etc. then use the Extract Data button from the toolbar. You can assign the copied text value to a variable from the list let us say $my-variable$.
6) Click on 'Stop Recording’ (Button visible in the Web recorder Bar at the top of the screen) to stop recording your activity.
7) Type your task name and click 'Save' to save the task. If you have purchased version, you can also specify a password to lock the task.
8) When you open the tasks created using Web Recorder in Task Editor (Tools->Task Editor), you will see all the Web Recorder commands related to the controls you worked with while recording for e.g. links, text boxes, drop down menus etc. You can enter other commands like Keystrokes, Mouse Clicks and any other command from the list of commands provided in the Task Editor.
9) A task created using Web Recorder is not restricted to only Web Recorder commands. You can edit your task and insert other actions to perform required action. For e.g. the data that you extracted can be pasted into any application, lets say MS Word or MS Excel.
10) You can use 'Excel’ commands that works tightly with excel to perform routine functions like Go To cell, get cells, run excel macro etc. You can use ‘Excel-Open Spreadsheet’ command to open the excel spreadsheet in which want to entered the data, ‘Excel-Go to Cell’ command to go to the particular cell in the spreadsheet and use the ‘Excel-Set Cells’ feature to insert the data or formula in spreadsheet.

We have attached sample task file (StockData.atmn) for your convenience in attached ExtractStockData.zip file.
Copy it under location, My Documents\Automation Anywhere\Automation Anywhere\My Tasks.
Copy 1.xls under C:\.
Exit from Automation Anywhere (even from system tray), if it is open and copy Variables.dat file under location, My Documents\Automation Anywhere

This task will extract stock data for IBM, MSFT and INTC in 1.xls. Now, you can sort this excel file as per your criteria and can insert them into online trading program's order-entry screens using 'Excel' commands of Automation Anywhere.

Hope that helps.

[tethysquest]

Thank you, I will try this and get back to you...

[tethysquest]

Hello, I put the 1.xls file under C:\, and put the variables.dat file all over the place, under C:\Program Files\Automation Anywhere 4.5 and C:\Program Files\Automation Anywhere 4.5\Automation Anywhere and C:\Program Files\Automation Anywhere 4.5\Automation Anywhere\My Tasks and C:\Users\EDAVIS3\Documents (I am in Vista, and "My Documents" has become "Documents," by default) ...trying to get this "variables.dat" found...

No luck, so far. When I run the task, it opens the 1.xls spreadsheet, then opens Yahoo Finance, places the text "my-value-1" into the "Get Quotes" blank, then errors-out at Symbol Lookup from Yahoo! Finance.

I guess(?) it is not connecting to (finding) the variables.dat list, properly? ...advice appreciated - thanks

[forumsupport]

Hello,

To copy variables.dat file, first exit from Automation Anywhere completely i.e. even from system tray by right clicking Automation Anywhere icon and selecting Exit option. Then copy variables.dat file under, ‘C:\...\My Documents\Automation Anywhere\' folder.

Hope that helps.