[Gambas-user] Quicky app

[Scott Castaline]

Rob wrote:
> On Sunday 24 June 2007, Scott Castaline wrote:
>> db Base. Is it possible to create the forms in Gambas and then the
>> reports in OOo? 
> 
> Possible, but there's no premade Gambas component to generate the 
> OpenOffice reports for printing yet.  You'd have to generate your own 
> XML file, zip it up into a .odt and print by shelling out to 
> OpenOffice.  
> 
> And at that point you might as well just use Gambas' built-in Printer 
> object, which is actually pretty easy to deal with but not a 
> full-blown report generator.  (Or try your luck with the recent 
> development versions which include the gb.report component, but I 
> personally would not use the development series for applications that 
> were critical to my business until the stable 2.0 is released.)
> 
>> Also I presume I create the db in MySQL first, 
>> (tables and relations etc) then in Gambas create the connection and
>> forms? 
> 
> Gambas actually has a database manager if you'd rather do it all from 
> within Gambas, but sure, you can create the DB in MySQL and set 
> everything up before going into Gambas if you like.
> 
>> How about Queries? Can I do that in Gambas? Queries 
>> generally use forms for the UI, correct?
> 
> I'm not sure what you're asking here.  Queries work fine in Gambas, 
> but queries are just commands sent to the database engine to change 
> data or retrieve rows for displaying.  For example, "select * from 
> customers where zip = '12065';" is a query.  Did you see an example 
> of a query somewhere else that you're hoping to duplicate in Gambas, 
> and if so, can you share it?
> 
> Everything you've described so far is going to require some coding, 
> btw.  I don't know if there are any "data entry and reporting" 
> packages for Linux that require no coding in the way that Foxpro or 
> Access required no coding for simple data entry tasks.  But even 
> Foxpro couldn't do parent and child forms without any coding, at 
> least when I used it (not sure about MS Access, since all the Access 
> projects I worked on involved lots of code.)  
> 
> And Gambas is more analogous to Visual Basic than one of those 
> database environments; there's no "data wizard" to automatically 
> generate a form that retrieves, edits and saves data from a table 
> yet, for example, though there are some data-bound controls in the 
> development version.
> 
> I certainly don't want to discourage you from trying Gambas, but I am 
> worried that you might be expecting to not have to do much coding.  
> Gambas is a language with a nice form designer and IDE, but it's 
> still a programming language at heart.  
> 
> Rob
> 
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The reason I just need something quick and dirty is that the program 
that my wife works for is undergoing some major changes, and how things 
are done today, won't be in the next 6 months. However, once the dust 
settles after the proverbial crap hits the fan, it may be useable with 
modifications, and at that point I would be interested in investing some 
major time into the app. I could give you more details if you want off 
list since this may not interest everybody else, but could be useful in 
more definitive advise.