Windows Automation Software
Posted: Wed Nov 23, 2005 6:29 pm
You should all know my feellings towards MS, their products and third party software. That said, I'm willing to give credit where credit is due and I give a lot of credit to <a href="http://www.hiddensoft.com/AutoIt/">Autoit</a>.
This is a great piece of free, automation software I stumbled upon today. Perhaps there is better, but this fit the bill for what I needed perfectly.
You have probably heard me bitching about our transportation software at work. It runs from a MSSql server. There is no automated backup. I have to manually start the program, log in and run their backup wizard. To top it off, the backup is not date stamped so daily backups overwrite one another each week (they are named for the day) and monthly backup is overwritten each day I run it for that month. Stoopid, stoopid, stoopid. Just goes to show how commercial software really lags. Repeated requests for these features have fallen on lame ears with the promise that maybe there will be automated backup in a future release but don't hold your breath for timestamping.
I'm not sure what idiot thinks like this but I would put automated backup with date/time stamping as a top priority. Maybe that is just me.
Anyway, in about an hour I used Autoit scripted to do exactly what I wanted - An automated backup with date stamp. I then compiled the script into an executable and set it up to run every day at 4:00 a.m. through windows task scheduler. It's that easy, and you know how I approach documentation - do first then seek answers.
This is a great piece of free, automation software I stumbled upon today. Perhaps there is better, but this fit the bill for what I needed perfectly.
You have probably heard me bitching about our transportation software at work. It runs from a MSSql server. There is no automated backup. I have to manually start the program, log in and run their backup wizard. To top it off, the backup is not date stamped so daily backups overwrite one another each week (they are named for the day) and monthly backup is overwritten each day I run it for that month. Stoopid, stoopid, stoopid. Just goes to show how commercial software really lags. Repeated requests for these features have fallen on lame ears with the promise that maybe there will be automated backup in a future release but don't hold your breath for timestamping.
I'm not sure what idiot thinks like this but I would put automated backup with date/time stamping as a top priority. Maybe that is just me.
Anyway, in about an hour I used Autoit scripted to do exactly what I wanted - An automated backup with date stamp. I then compiled the script into an executable and set it up to run every day at 4:00 a.m. through windows task scheduler. It's that easy, and you know how I approach documentation - do first then seek answers.