Columbine

Overview

The Maxagrid Advanced Revenue Management System application has the facility to automate the updating of sold counts. For Columbine systems, a Skim Availability report must be created and spooled to a disk file. The Columbine file then serves as an import file for the Advanced Revenue Management System application to refresh Maxagrid sold counts. The Columbine Skim file has 2 basic formats.

Units-based
Time-based

The following pages display the format possibilities. A station should produce that data format in which sales staff typically sell or monitor the inventory.

Units-based file

004 SKIM AVAILABILITY FOR KAAA-FM    AS OF  6/02/98 AT 12:38PM ************************************ PAGE:      1
   1DATE RANGE: FROM  6/08/98 TO  8/23/98                                             USER PRINT  FROM QPADEV0003 GROUP NAME     LTC
   2010 AM DRIVE        MONDAY      TUESDAY     WEDNESDAY     THURSDAY      FRIDAY                                5A-10A M-F
   1PR LIM:  1/Break    6/08/98      6/09/98      6/10/98      6/11/98      6/12/98                                          - TFN
   0________________ ____________ ____________ ____________ ____________ ____________
   1 TOTAL CAPACITY       59           59           59           59           59
   1 TOTAL SOLD           50  85%      51  86%      61 103%      60 102%      59 100%
   1 AVAILABLE             9  15%       8  14%       2-           1-           0
  2020 MIDDAY           MONDAY      TUESDAY     WEDNESDAY     THURSDAY      FRIDAY                                10A-3P M-F
   1PR LIM:  1/Break    6/08/98      6/09/98      6/10/98      6/11/98      6/12/98                                          - TFN
   0________________ ____________ ____________ ____________ ____________ ____________
   1 TOTAL CAPACITY       59           59           59           59           59
   1 TOTAL SOLD           37  63%      37  63%      54  92%      53  90%      48  81%
   1 AVAILABLE            22  37%      22  37%       5   8%       6  10%      11  19%
   2030 PM DRIVE        MONDAY      TUESDAY     WEDNESDAY     THURSDAY      FRIDAY                                3P-8P M-F
   1PR LIM:  1/Break    6/08/98      6/09/98      6/10/98      6/11/98      6/12/98                                          - TFN
   0________________ ____________ ____________ ____________ ____________ ____________
   1 TOTAL CAPACITY       59           59           59           59           59
   1 TOTAL SOLD           57  97%      57  97%      59 100%      59 100%      60 102%
   1 AVAILABLE             2   3%       2   3%       0            0            1-
  2040 EVENING M-SUN    MONDAY      TUESDAY     WEDNESDAY     THURSDAY      FRIDAY      SATURDAY      SUNDAY      8P-12M MON-SUN
   1PR LIM:  1/Break    6/08/98      6/09/98      6/10/98      6/11/98      6/12/98      6/13/98      6/14/98                - TFN
   0________________ ____________ ____________ ____________ ____________ ____________ ____________ _____________
   1 TOTAL CAPACITY       45           45           45           45           45           52           26
   1 TOTAL SOLD           37  82%      28  62%      40  89%      35  78%      39  87%       8  15%       7  27%
   1 AVAILABLE             8  18%      17  38%       5  11%      10  22%       6  13%      44  85%      19  73%
(etc….)

Time-based file

004 SKIM AVAILABILITY FOR KENT-FM    AS OF 12/15/97 AT  5:49PM ************************************ PAGE:      1
   1DATE RANGE: FROM 12/15/97 TO  1/11/98                                             USER CAP    FROM TRAFPCS1   GROUP NAME     LTC
   2050 M-F, AM DRIVE   MONDAY      TUESDAY     WEDNESDAY     THURSDAY      FRIDAY                                MORNING DRIVE
   1PR LIM: ??/??/??   12/15/97     12/16/97     12/17/97     12/18/97     12/19/97                                          - TFN
   0________________ ____________ ____________ ____________ ____________ ____________
   1 TOTAL CAPACITY    60:00        60:00        60:00        60:00        60:00
   1 TOTAL SOLD        34:00  57%   31:00  52%    8:00  13%   10:00  17%    7:00  12%
   1 AVAILABLE         26:00  43%   29:00  48%   52:00  87%   50:00  83%   53:00  88%
   2051 10A-3P          MONDAY      TUESDAY     WEDNESDAY     THURSDAY      FRIDAY                                MID DAY
   1PR LIM: ??/00/00   12/15/97     12/16/97     12/17/97     12/18/97     12/19/97                                          - TFN
   0________________ ____________ ____________ ____________ ____________ ____________
   1 TOTAL CAPACITY    60:00        60:00        60:00        60:00        60:00
   1 TOTAL SOLD        28:00  47%   24:00  40%   10:00  17%   12:00  20%    8:00  13%
   1 AVAILABLE         32:00  53%   36:00  60%   50:00  83%   48:00  80%   52:00  87%
   2052 3P-8P           MONDAY      TUESDAY     WEDNESDAY     THURSDAY      FRIDAY                                AFTERNOO DRIVE
   1PR LIM: ??/??/??   12/15/97     12/16/97     12/17/97     12/18/97     12/19/97                                          - TFN
   0________________ ____________ ____________ ____________ ____________ ____________
   1 TOTAL CAPACITY    60:00        60:00        60:00        60:00        60:00
   1 TOTAL SOLD        31:00  52%   26:00  43%    9:00  15%   10:00  17%    8:00  13%
   1 AVAILABLE         29:00  48%   34:00  57%   51:00  85%   50:00  83%   52:00  87%
   2057 WKEND 5A-9A                                                                     SATURDAY      SUNDAY      WEEKEND  5A-9A
   1PR LIM: ??/??/??                                                                    12/27/97     12/28/97                - TFN
   0________________                                                                  ____________ _____________
   1 TOTAL CAPACITY                                                                     36:00        48:00
   1 TOTAL SOLD                                                                          3:00   8%    2:00   4%
   1 AVAILABLE                                                                          33:00  92%   46:00  96%
(etc….)

Traffic Nuances

A Columbine Traffic system is operated on either an AS/400 or System 36 IBM system.
A Skim Inventory report must be created, then held in print queue, then re-directed to a file. Then, the file must be converted to a DOS Text file.
For pulling a file from an AS/400 & S36 to a DOS Text file, popular software packages are IBM Client Access, RUMBA, and PC Support.
Often a Skim file is created incorrectly, resulting in bad data. One common error during the AS400 spool is for the user to specify the *PRTCTL option. Specifying this option then produces the Print Control instructions to appear at the left margin of the report file. Typically, this offset to the left margin of control characters take up 4 characters per row. This is to allow the date columns to appear, -- date columns which are crucial in identifying calendar dates. Note the above file examples, the offset caused by the *PRTCTL option is included, but each has the column dates needed for processing.Without the *PRTCTL option, the spooled file is created as if it were sent to a printer, -- that is following lines of underscore characters overwrite the column dates. The file would result as the following example:

Bad Format (NO COLUMN DATES):

010 500A-10A M-F    MONDAY      TUESDAY     WEDNESDAY     THURSDAY      FRIDAY   
________________ ____________ ____________ ____________ ____________ ____________
 TOTAL CAPACITY       56           56           56           56           56     
 TOTAL SOLD           51  91%      53  95%      53  95%      53  95%      55  98%
 AVAILABLE             5   9%       3   5%       3   5%       3   5%       1   2%

For Traffic Loads processed as "Units & Time", two files must be created, one as units-based the other as time-based. Logically, these should differ in name, and the name should reflect the purpose of the file (i.e., skimun.txt (for units-based file), skimtm.txt (for time-based file)).
For more information on Columbine, refer to Maxagrid Tech-Note "Generating Columbine Skim to Disk File."