Alpha Five for ad Hoc Data analysis and manipultation
comment on the tech republic blog re alpha five - data driven application development done right
http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-128...sageID=2517339
[Alpha Five v9] doesn't have to be for full app development
It is great for app development, but it beats the pants off of Access for ad hoc data analysis and manipulation. The action scripting genies in combination with the expression builder make it easier to use than access, and the richness of the built in functions make it more powerful.
I imported an audit trail from Quickbooks in CSV format. The problem with many quickbooks exports is that it is really two tables combined into one, with the transaction header line repeated only once per transaction. There is also a problem in that multiple prior versions of the transaction are all referred to as prior, whereas I wanted P1 - Px to denote the particular version. Alpha's update operation made it quite easy to transform my data as alpha contains a function that refers to the previous record. I have created a short Jing screencast at http://www.screencast.com/t/jA63SEjt4 that shows how easy it is.
Alpha's report writer has something that many competing products do not have. It can include conditional objects. Thus I can set a variety of styles in the detail band which at times can be nice.
Posted: 06/06/2008 @ 04:59 PM (PDT)
comment on the tech republic blog re alpha five - data driven application development done right
http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-128...sageID=2517339
[Alpha Five v9] doesn't have to be for full app development
It is great for app development, but it beats the pants off of Access for ad hoc data analysis and manipulation. The action scripting genies in combination with the expression builder make it easier to use than access, and the richness of the built in functions make it more powerful.
I imported an audit trail from Quickbooks in CSV format. The problem with many quickbooks exports is that it is really two tables combined into one, with the transaction header line repeated only once per transaction. There is also a problem in that multiple prior versions of the transaction are all referred to as prior, whereas I wanted P1 - Px to denote the particular version. Alpha's update operation made it quite easy to transform my data as alpha contains a function that refers to the previous record. I have created a short Jing screencast at http://www.screencast.com/t/jA63SEjt4 that shows how easy it is.
Alpha's report writer has something that many competing products do not have. It can include conditional objects. Thus I can set a variety of styles in the detail band which at times can be nice.
Posted: 06/06/2008 @ 04:59 PM (PDT)