Hypercard using nine to five reports and converted to revolution

[Richard Gaskin]

> Has anyone had any experience with nine to five reports and making
> equivalents in revolution? Not just the report functions but also the fast
> search functions and the spreadsheet like user interface?

Ah, there you hit the nail on the head as to why such a thing is absent:
queries.

In HyperCard you have one place to store data, in fields.  But while you can
do that in Rev, for some projects there are good reasons to store things in
custom propertyies, MySQL, Valentina, etc.  Each different place you can
store data requires a different method of querying.

Getting complex print putput in the MC engine is usually not atom-splitting,
merely tedious.   But the many different types of query mechanisms add a
significant overhead for anyone trying to make a generalized printing
solution. 

To complicate matters further, Reports was implemented as an external and as
such could be useful to other products supporting that interface (SuperCard,
OMO, etc.).   But to do something like that in Rev, it would be simplest
from an engineering standpoint to do it in native Transcript (how else could
you affordably do that for all supported platforms?), but from a business
perspective that means it could only be used by two product audiences (Rev
and MC).

In brief, there isn't such a critter today, and it seems unlikly there'll be
one in the near term (< one year).

On the upside, while rolling your own will probably cost more than Reports
did, its doable and you'll have complete control over allaspects of it.

Question:  what are the specific benefits of including a spreadsheet UI in a
reporting tool?  There may be simpler ways to provide the same value....

-- 
 Richard Gaskin 
 Fourth World Media Corporation
 Developer of WebMerge 2.2: Publish any database on any site
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