Alpha Software Mobile Development Tools:   Alpha Anywhere    |   Alpha TransForm subscribe to our YouTube Channel  Follow Us on LinkedIn  Follow Us on Twitter  Follow Us on Facebook

Announcement

Collapse

The Alpha Software Forum Participation Guidelines

The Alpha Software Forum is a free forum created for Alpha Software Developer Community to ask for help, exchange ideas, and share solutions. Alpha Software strives to create an environment where all members of the community can feel safe to participate. In order to ensure the Alpha Software Forum is a place where all feel welcome, forum participants are expected to behave as follows:
  • Be professional in your conduct
  • Be kind to others
  • Be constructive when giving feedback
  • Be open to new ideas and suggestions
  • Stay on topic


Be sure all comments and threads you post are respectful. Posts that contain any of the following content will be considered a violation of your agreement as a member of the Alpha Software Forum Community and will be moderated:
  • Spam.
  • Vulgar language.
  • Quotes from private conversations without permission, including pricing and other sales related discussions.
  • Personal attacks, insults, or subtle put-downs.
  • Harassment, bullying, threatening, mocking, shaming, or deriding anyone.
  • Sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, or otherwise discriminatory jokes and language.
  • Sexually explicit or violent material, links, or language.
  • Pirated, hacked, or copyright-infringing material.
  • Encouraging of others to engage in the above behaviors.


If a thread or post is found to contain any of the content outlined above, a moderator may choose to take one of the following actions:
  • Remove the Post or Thread - the content is removed from the forum.
  • Place the User in Moderation - all posts and new threads must be approved by a moderator before they are posted.
  • Temporarily Ban the User - user is banned from forum for a period of time.
  • Permanently Ban the User - user is permanently banned from the forum.


Moderators may also rename posts and threads if they are too generic or do not property reflect the content.

Moderators may move threads if they have been posted in the incorrect forum.

Threads/Posts questioning specific moderator decisions or actions (such as "why was a user banned?") are not allowed and will be removed.

The owners of Alpha Software Corporation (Forum Owner) reserve the right to remove, edit, move, or close any thread for any reason; or ban any forum member without notice, reason, or explanation.

Community members are encouraged to click the "Report Post" icon in the lower left of a given post if they feel the post is in violation of the rules. This will alert the Moderators to take a look.

Alpha Software Corporation may amend the guidelines from time to time and may also vary the procedures it sets out where appropriate in a particular case. Your agreement to comply with the guidelines will be deemed agreement to any changes to it.



Bonus TIPS for Successful Posting

Try a Search First
It is highly recommended that a Search be done on your topic before posting, as many questions have been answered in prior posts. As with any search engine, the shorter the search term, the more "hits" will be returned, but the more specific the search term is, the greater the relevance of those "hits". Searching for "table" might well return every message on the board while "tablesum" would greatly restrict the number of messages returned.

When you do post
First, make sure you are posting your question in the correct forum. For example, if you post an issue regarding Desktop applications on the Mobile & Browser Applications board , not only will your question not be seen by the appropriate audience, it may also be removed or relocated.

The more detail you provide about your problem or question, the more likely someone is to understand your request and be able to help. A sample database with a minimum of records (and its support files, zipped together) will make it much easier to diagnose issues with your application. Screen shots of error messages are especially helpful.

When explaining how to reproduce your problem, please be as detailed as possible. Describe every step, click-by-click and keypress-by-keypress. Otherwise when others try to duplicate your problem, they may do something slightly different and end up with different results.

A note about attachments
You may only attach one file to each message. Attachment file size is limited to 2MB. If you need to include several files, you may do so by zipping them into a single archive.

If you forgot to attach your files to your post, please do NOT create a new thread. Instead, reply to your original message and attach the file there.

When attaching screen shots, it is best to attach an image file (.BMP, .JPG, .GIF, .PNG, etc.) or a zip file of several images, as opposed to a Word document containing the screen shots. Because Word documents are prone to viruses, many message board users will not open your Word file, therefore limiting their ability to help you.

Similarly, if you are uploading a zipped archive, you should simply create a .ZIP file and not a self-extracting .EXE as many users will not run your EXE file.
See more
See less

What is incentive to use report writers other than A5's built in?

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    What is incentive to use report writers other than A5's built in?

    I have set up some core tables in A5 and am very happy with the functions built into A5 i.e. LookupN() which has enabled to code much more efficiently than I could in a previous DOS database.
    As I turn my attention to the reporting areas I am curious as to what would be the motivating issues that would lead to getting an external report writer like Crystal or R&R.
    I am already very impressed with the facitlity built into A5. Since reporting is a very large part of the interaction with the database my question is why a
    3rd party program would be seen as essential. Having an additional piece of software means learning another interface etc..

    Appreciate any insights that are out there.

    P.S. is it likely that ongoing A5 development work would minimize the need to use 3rd party software? If so, I am willing to wait since my base application is at its early stages.

    #2
    There was a time when alpha was limited to reading from other formats, at this point alpha is capable of reading from many data sources thus the need for Crystal- report reader is dramatically reduced. I have found if you happen accross a software package which appears to be impossible to read data from, a simple call to the appropriate tech support will answer that question. (usually unusual character/data format-switches)

    Comment


      #3
      Originally posted by Willard
      There was a time when alpha was limited to reading from other formats, at this point alpha is capable of reading from many data sources thus the need for Crystal- report reader is dramatically reduced. I have found if you happen accross a software package which appears to be impossible to read data from, a simple call to the appropriate tech support will answer that question. (usually unusual character/data format-switches)
      Thanks Willard

      My ? was prompted by a desire to have a "headspup" at an early stage of development.
      So far have been very impressed with functionalities I am in process of discovering :)

      Comment


        #4
        Consider ole to excel

        Originally posted by ken doucet
        Thanks Willard

        My ? was prompted by a desire to have a "headspup" at an early stage of development.
        So far have been very impressed with functionalities I am in process of discovering :)
        Reports have their place and Alpha's report writer has always served my needs. Suppose, however, your clients want to do something with the data in the report.

        You might be pleasantly surprised how easy, if sometimes tedious, it is to constuct a spreadsheet in Excel which is the result of Alpha outputting to Excel. The end user can then copy and paste into other spreadsheets, accumulate totals, take advantage of Excel's graphing tools, etc.

        Just an opinion.
        There can be only one.

        Comment


          #5
          Originally posted by Stan Mathews
          Reports have their place and Alpha's report writer has always served my needs. Suppose, however, your clients want to do something with the data in the report.

          You might be pleasantly surprised how easy, if sometimes tedious, it is to constuct a spreadsheet in Excel which is the result of Alpha outputting to Excel. The end user can then copy and paste into other spreadsheets, accumulate totals, take advantage of Excel's graphing tools, etc.

          Just an opinion.
          Thanks Stan,

          I know I will be using the Excel and Word export facilty - and appreciate its being built into A5. I suspect most of my reporting needs will be facilitated with A5.

          The feedback in this forum is definitely helping me transition into A5!

          Ken

          Comment


            #6
            FWIW, I have never used any 3rd party report writers and have always been able to accomplish what I needed.

            There have been a few cases where a "simple" and/or single A5 report could not do the job and I had to get fancy. On some very complex reports that either took a long time to create (run) or could not be created with the existing tables/sets, I (and a few others) have built temp tables with an xbasic routine then imported the data into an existing report table.

            I have had a couple highly unusual situations over the 16 or so years I've been using Alpha:

            In one case the user wanted a complex summary report that simply couldn't be handled as part of the main report. Some of the "summary" fields weren't even part of the main report. The solution was to run a second report immediately after the first. The user was very satisified with the result - it got him what he needed.

            In another case the report was so complicated that I actually built a major part of it as a text file using an xbasic routine then just displayed the text in the report.

            It's sometimes amazing what a little imagination can create.

            Comment


              #7
              Thanks for your feedback Cal. This, along with the other replies has increased my comfort levels as I move into A5 territory.
              What really sets this forum apart is the great feedback as to creative ways to do things.
              Also, the zip files available in some of the threads are really useful learning tools when you can see how the topic is discussed and then have a hands-on view. This makes incorporating some of the creative solutions so much easier.

              Comment

              Working...
              X