An Output Channel is a logical connection through which data can be transferred from a Foundation1 based application to another application. This functionality is achieved in two steps:
Step 1 is performed by the Foundation1 client framework, and step 2 by the OS.
Read also about Administrating Output Channels.
When the user invokes an output channel, Foundation1 reads information from the active window or data source, and generates a file of the format specified for the output channel. In order to minimize the amount of user interaction required, the framework automatically generates a name and location for the file. Generated files are saved in the folder indicated by the TEMP environment variable.
Note: It is important to take note that Output Channels are most suited when used to create output files using the data already seen in an Enterprise Explorer table window or form window. The reason behind this is that the extracted data needs to be formatted in the client before converting into an output channel and this is a costly operation if there is a large number of records being retrieved from the database. So, if the requirement is to retrieve large amounts of data from the database through Enterprise Explorer, then it is advised to use Excel Quick Reports rather than Output Channels which would allow for much better performance.
To open the file, it must first be determined what application to use, and how to open the file with that application. For this the file types registered with Windows are used.
A registered file type contains information about how to perform various actions (e.g. Open) on the file, and what extension is associated with the file type. Foundation1 lets the user specify what extension the generated file should have, thus also determining what file type Windows uses when opening the file.
To change how the generated file is opened (e.g. whether a new copy of the program is started for each file), please edit the file type settings in Windows.