Information is useful only to the extent it is communicated effectively. Flexible data communications is an important part of a quality information system.
Fire departments present unique data communications challenges. Not only does a fire department information system need to be able to communicate among work stations in a single building, it should support various WAN "wide area network" options to connect outlying fire stations with headquarters.
FirePoint can communicate data via disk, thumb-drive sync, modem on a dial-up phone line, net modem on a dedicated network connection, high speed digital lines as well as wireless and hardwired LANs (Local Area Networks).
As seen in the last chapter most FirePoint applications have the ability to export and import records via File Operations.
File Operations allows you to export or import records.
All records are exported into a transfer folder. The exact location of the folder is determined by the "path" set during system configuration. The "server" or "local" path is chosen by the user at the time of the export.
When a selection of records are exported, one or two export files are created. The files are labeled in a specific manner. When Incidents are exported, for example, two export files are created. Here's the logic behind the label.
The first three letters identify a file; "IN1" the Incidents file, "IN2" the Descriptions file. The fourth character is always a period. The next six characters indicate the date of the export in year, month and day format. The last four characters indicate the time of the export.
Exported records are placed in the TRANSFER folder at the end of the select (Server or Local) path. When File Operations is used to import records, the records are loaded from the TRANSFER folder on the same path. For this reason, you should use the same paths in each FirePoint installation.
One disadvantage of exporting and importing via file operations is that the exporter must determine which records need to be exported. In addition, the importer must know which records within the transfer folder need to be imported. To simplify the exporting and importing process FirePoint has an available Exports application available in its "Sync" and "Server" versions.
This chapter covers the data communications capabilities of the Exports module.