Thoughts/Impressions of Valentina

[Ruslan_Zasukhin]

[quote=253186:@Russ Lunn]I wasn’t making a report, i was trying to design a query. I thought i would be able to add a parameter to it. it seems this is not possible?

I know that sometimes i work in odd ways! my idea was this

1. Design Query that has parameters for where clause
2. Design Report that uses the Query.
   Maybe this is not the way it works?[/quote]

Hi Russ,

You will use that report later in Xojo app?

From app code you will use MakeNewReport() method

MakeNewReport( 
    inIndex as integer,
    inDatasource as string,
    inQuery as String = NULL,
    inBinds() as StringOrVariant ) as VReport

i.e. you can define here the whole SQL query with WHERE part as you want.

Yes, in most case-sensitive this query will be similar in SELECT … FROM part, and differ in WHERE to select records you want to report.

You can ask, why I should do this query again? – Because this gives more power and flexibility.

• You can design report against some test mySQL db on your computer, but LATER this report can be used against any other DB.

• You can use query, which in fact differ a lots from original in Report Designer. It is important only to have the same list of fields in the SELECT. All rest can be different - tables, joins, views, where.

P.S. Report Parameters – should be considered as global variables of a Report, which you can modify from app code before produce report. For example - name of report.

[Lynn_Fredricks1 (Lynn Fredricks)]

@253312:@Chay Wesley

My suggestion is that you begin by making it available offline in some format other than outdated PDFs. The most recent offline doc for Valentina / Xojo that I can find on the website is a PDF dated 2014 and labeled “Valentina 5 for REALbasic”. Proper documentation is hard, but outdated documentation will not inspire confidence in potential new customers.

I happen to like PDFs too - but I think reorganization has to come first, along with more editing. A challenge for us has been that our developers are non-native English speakers. Some have gotten better and better over the years, but it still means it has to be at least eyeballed. We’ve gotten quite a bit of good feedback when someone explodes with “Ruslan, just what the @!#$* does that mean?”

Maybe also a step might be to re-organize in a way that makes it easier to generate PDFs from the wiki itself.

[olivierV]

It is perhaps surprising, but on the other hand, as a non-native English speaker, I appreciate the Valentina documentation precisely because it is made by non-native English speakers, so it uses very simple terms.