Report customization nightmare

Mike or Penny Novack stepbystepfarm at mtdata.com
Tue Jun 29 12:01:34 EDT 2010


>Tim> Maybe once the data gets stored in a relational database  you can
>Tim> use off the shelf reporting tools.
>
>  
>
I'm going to comment on the "coding" issue because not totally unrelated.

This is a case where "getting it to work" (however clumsily) is indeed 
easier with a relational database but I have to say based on experience 
from my days in the "cypher mines" that the average programmer wasn't 
too swift with "set operations" (proper coding instead of clumsy 
queries). There were several of their programs where I rewrote the 
queries getting an ORDER OF MAGNITUDE improvement in performance!

The problem with scheme is of course unfamiliarity working with 
the"functional" languages as most of us learned "procedural" languages 
first and it's a different way of thinking. Not that some of our more 
common languages can't be used both ways. While learning C I was 
challenged to rewrite one of my simple programs so that it would be pure 
"function evaluation" instead of "procedure" and yes it can be done.

Michael




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