XTalk based data sources

[Tuviah M Snyder]

The whole SDB working with RunRev got me thinking..what if in addition to
getting RevDB working with all standard external databases (Valentina,
Oracle, MySQL, ect) we could write script libraries to get revdb working
with other data sources by having developers write wrappers around revdb
where you would be able to use SDB and other stack based database with
RevDB (ie. revOpenDatabase would accept text,stack,sdb). When I say data
source, I mean anything which can be represented as fields and records.
For instance an item delimited text file. XML. SDB. A custom property
array. An of course the ultimate stack based databases where a file is a
database, a table is a stack, cards are records and background fields are
fields in a table.

This would not only allow developers to create all kinds of cool
applications using revDB and the query manager, allow for more flexible
applications in general, but would also put the necessary plumbing in
place for a killer Rev report generator.

The kind of report generator that can execute complex queries/formatting
on multiple data sources including stacks using the most powerful
query-yet easy query language to date, SQL.  Novices would build the SQL
query using a wizard (aka. select stacks to display, select condition,
select sorting order). However for power users suppose you had two stacks
emp, and dept and wanted to be able to either display or print a report
in another stack of employees that belong to a certain department name.
Well usually this would require additional scripting on the part of the
developer. But with stacks and custom properties working as data sources,
you would be able to use the query manager or an SQL based report
generator to do this in no time using a simple SQL query. Would work like
the standard DB based report generators (think Access, FileMaker), lay
out a bunch of fields, link them to a query manager query, and presto
instant reports.

oh well, have to go see the Matrix reloaded again:-)


Tuviah Snyder <tuviah at runrev.com> <http://www.runrev.com/>
Runtime Revolution Limited - Software at the Speed of Thought