Re: Report generation

On Fri, 15 Feb 2002, Rich Shepard wrote:

> Rod,
>
> Thanks for the pointer. And, I agree about Java (despite having a friend
> who's quite the expert with it). A few years ago I tried one app (it might
> have been MoneyDance) that required me to get an earlier version of the JRE
> in order to run. After wasting about an hour on it I gave up.

I think this was one I tried also. There was a WebCDWrite application
that went nowhere too.

> I think that it's probably about time to really dig into learning perl.
> This will let me write any reports I want and integrate them into the
> application. I'll probably be able to code ad-hoc reporting functions, too,
> and make it work the way we need it to work.

I'm a CPF (Certified Perl Fanatic) but need to add unless you're going
to write a generic report writer don't expect a lot of flexibility for
'users'.
Back in my US Forest Services days I wrote lots of LaTeX some of it
from SQL queries and other databases with quite a bit massaged by perl.
The down side is it wasn't MS-simple so I had to do all the work.

> But, I'll take a look at datavision.

A plus side I noted is it generates XML and I believe there is a
XML->LaTeX filter out there (written in Perl too?).

Best,
Rod
--
Let Accuracy Triumph Over Victory

Zetetic Institute
"David's Sling"
Marc Stiegler