Stack file size

[simplsol at aol.com]

John,
The ideal is actually THREE objects: one for the code, one for the 
data, and one for the interface. This is very flexible but not always 
practical.
As for the current 2000 card stack, all is not lost. You could write an 
updater that would take the data from the old stack (card by card) and 
move it to a new stack (that contains your new interface and code). 
Once tested, the updater could import a couple thousand cards in a few 
minutes.
Paul Looney

-----Original Message-----
From: John Ridge <ridge11103 at btinternet.com>
To: How to use Revolution <use-revolution at lists.runrev.com>
Sent: Thu, 26 May 2005 20:53:47 +0100
Subject: Re: Stack file size

   From: Lars Brehmer <larsbrehmer at mac.com>
Reply-To: How to use Revolution <use-revolution at lists.runrev.com>
Date: Thu, 26 May 2005 14:46:43 +0300
To: use-revolution at lists.runrev.com
Subject: Re: Stack file size
<snip>
To be honest, I shy away from using the database solution
for 2 reasons - one, I lack the knoweldge and skills to implement it,
and two, I see on the RevList people with far more skills than I
having all kinds of problems with databases every day, which makes me
even more hesitant.
<snip>

I agree! I think we have very similar problems. The crunch for me comes 
from
the following: a few years ago, I (foolishly?) showed a friend of mine a
very simple old Hypercard Address Book stack that really met her needs. 
It
had a "Notes" field, so she could add biographical stuff to her very 
large
address book, and, vitally, I had also added an "Extract" button, which
selectively output into a Word file a mailmerge database of addresses 
that,
in their "Notes" field, had a specified tag (three guesses - "xmas" was 
the
first choice!). This could be used to print standard address labels.

Fine. This was all done with the free version of Metacard - I put the 
IDE on
her XP machine, so it wasn't actually a standalone. I'm embarrassed 
about it
now - pretty crude, etc, and I'd love to replace it with my new,
revolutionary version. BUT...

She has a stack of ? 2000 cards. The program and the data are not 
separated.
If I dream up an improvement to the program (menus instead of buttons, 
for
example), how do I update her? If her data were in a separate entity, no
problem - I'd simply send her a new standalone, and it would open and 
read
her records. All I can think of at the moment is that she sends me her
current stack, I try to remember exactly what changes I have made in the
scripting, the properties of objects etc, put all those in, compile the
result and send it back to her. In the meantime (could be a long time) 
she
can't make any additions to her address book, or we're back to Go again.

This just can't be right. Surely it's the point at which the card 
metaphor,
great as it's been, has to be developed. The database must be the 
answer. I
have no idea what "SQL" is, but there's a lot of talk, so presumably I 
can
find out.

Obviously, I'm a hobbyist - I script when I have to! But even for people
like me, there's a need to face up to the real world - separating 
program
 from data is what databases are for, and that why the grown-ups use 
them...

Or have I  misunderstood?


_______________________________________________
use-revolution mailing list
use-revolution at lists.runrev.com
http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution