Development question

[richardurban]

I am new to developing applications for sale. I am planning to make run time applications. My question; is it sometimes advisable to have the client purchase a full working version to give them more flexibilitly (such as making letters on their own letterhead), assuming they learn how to use such features?

[csda1]

RE: Development question

Unless you want to hand hold them all the time, I think Alpha 5 is the one database that you can easily give that type of access to the end-user (within reason).

Just be careful to keep the data dictionaries in sync.


Regards,

Ira J. Perlow
Computer Systems Design & Associates
[email protected]

[drgarytraub]

RE: Development question

Ira:

Will version 5 allow us to offer just selected parts of the control panel to our users? For example, it would be nice if we could offer the user the ability to design their own reports and letters, but not allow them access to ther areas. Do you agree?

Gary Traub

[martinwcole]

RE: Development question

yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and, oh, by the way, yes!

[richardurban]

RE: Development question

So that would mean building a back up routine in to the application so that any changes the client makes could be transmitted back to me, to keep my version up to date?

[Dan Blank]

RE: Development question

You can give these abilities to users now thanks to A5v1.

Try this:
Make a button. On the OnPush event place this code:
filename="YourTableName.dbf"
card_spawn("report_editor","spawndb=~"+filename+"~")

This will Open up the report editor. And let the user desing a report.

Now, the weakness is how do you let the user save this report and then let the user make a button to reprint it sometime in the future?

That's What I am looking for!

Dan

[Jim Chapman]

RE: Development question

Hi Dan,

>>and then let the user make a button to reprint it sometime in the future?

[drgarytraub]

RE: Development question

WOW - I did not know that you could do that!

But:

1. if there are say 10 reports associated with a table, how do you specify a specific report to be opened in design mode?

2. can this be used to allow the user to create their own reports.

I suppose this will only work in the full version, not the run time. Is that correct? What I am really after is the ability to let the user in a run time to add, or change their own reports, letters, and labels. Is that possible? If not, will version 5 offer this feature? Many commercial applications have built in report designers and that is what I would like to include in my application.

Thanks for any help or suggestions.

Gary Traub

[Dan Blank]

RE: Development question

Thanks Jim I will give that a try!

Dan

[Bill Warner]

RE: Development question

Here's a personal opinion based on my having sold apps to customers for the last 7 years.

I virtually never recommend selling an app to someone that wants to edit it themselves, for this reason: many apps involve a lot of interconnectedness (if that's a word) to make them run well. If a customer decides to change one thing, there's always the possibility that the change will impact something else. Next thing you know, they're calling because that "something else" no longer works properly. Then you have the potential disagreement as to whose fault it is, and who should pay to fix it.

Since I spend a great deal of time to make my apps as functional as possible, and back them up with a very thorough warranty (i.e., even if I think something might be their fault due to stupid data-entry or other causes, I'll fix it at no charge, to maintain good customer relations), i don't need the added headaches associated with having a customer "tinkering" with the app.

Here's one way to look at it: Let's say you bought a new car and, since you're a pretty good backyard mechanic, decided to tweak the fuel injection. If something goes wrong, do you think Ford would fix it under warranty, knowing you had messed with it?

To temper the above somewhat, I do have a couple customers that have the full version, and at times it is more expedient for me to walk them through a simple change that to send the necessary files to do the same thing. But I have made it very clear to them that they should only make these changes with my direct supervision.

As I said, this is a personal opinion, and other situations might work with other people. This is what works best for me.

[Bill Warner]

RE: Development question

One more thought: suppose your customer alters a report in a set called SALES, and then sometime later asks you to create a new form in that set. If you fail to get the changes he made, when you create the new form, his changes will be gone.

[CALocklin]

RE: Development question

I'll second Bill Warner's comments. I have two customers who insist on doing this type of thing and a couple issues have arisen:

With the first customer I'm lucky to have a good relationship because there have been a few instances where we have lost forms, reports, etc. due to 'synchronization' problems as Bill mentioned. Other than that, this customer hasn't been too bad.

The other customer insists on keeping the ability to do just about anything. As a result, I have wasted a lot of time fixing things, coordinating my efforts with his, and generally trying to figure out just what he is trying to do. And time = $$, so this is becoming an issue. He thinks the cost is high compared to the results and he is right - even though I've reduced my hours billed in some cases. But it's because the directions keep changing along with the 'basis' of what I'm doing. (ie, new forms, new indexes, etc. are constantly be added by the customer.) So, I can't just sit down and work efficiently.

In both these cases, and in other situations where I have started from something developed by the customer, I often find very inefficient methods being used. For example, 20+ copies of the same report with just a different header, many indexes and saved operations created for one-time use but not deleted (which ones are still needed?), forms used as reports so now you can't add buttons or other usability features such as tabbed forms and nice background images. In some cases, the data dictionary files have become huge because all control has been lost.

[drgarytraub]

RE: Development question

All these are great points. I think the bottom line is that you all are recomending not letting the user get in the way of a nice running appliation. That all makes sense to me. But, what about a way to let users design their own reports, letters, and labels. That would give them a huge measure of increased functionality, without in any way interefering with what has already been developed by the programmer. I really think this is a fairly standard feature of good competitive programs on the market. Am I missing something?

Gary Traub

[Bill Warner]

RE: Development question

Gary, I think this would be fine, as long as you were done with the app. But during the development, it could cause a lot of problems.

As far as letting them "design" a report, I have done this to a certain extent in Runtime. I designed a report that has many IF statements, each of which referenced a logical variable. These variables are defined in a dialog form with check boxes. While in this form, the user checks which field they want to include in the report. Then the report includes only those that are checked.

Obviously, there are some limits to this approach. In my app, I had two different reports, and the one to be run was determined by which field/fields were chosen. This allows a fair degree of flexibility. Yes, it's time-consuming to set up, but I'd much rather spend the time doing this than trying to fix what the user might do.

[Tom Cone Jr]

RE: Development question

Gary, there are several message threads, and a couple of articles at Dr. Wayne's discussing ways to build a report and include space for the user to insert variable text (even things that are several paragraphs in length).


In this scenario you don't give the user the option to build new reports, you just make it possible to modify reports which you've already designed and included.