[Gnue-dev] GNUe Reports

[Patrick Bakker]

Hello all.
I have the small possibility that I will be implementing a project for a
greenhouse nursery to coordinate inventory management, accounting and
customer management (ERP? I'm not too familiar with industry jargon). I
considered (and am considering) the possibility of using PostgreSQL
(database) / omniORB (application server) / GTK+ 2.0 (GUI) using
Python/C primarily. This is all dependent on if I am given the go-ahead.
However, since we're currently locked in proprietary NT/2000 solution
printing will be the most serious obstacle. I plan to get around this by
creating all reports as PDFs since they are good quality, its useful for
them to be saved as files anyway and I can then use Adobe Acrobat Reader
to do the printing. In the meantime I've come across GNUe and I like the
direction its heading. Perhaps the biggest concern my employers have is
the maintainability of the software when I leave - they really want the
security of having a support channel. My latest thought is to suggest
making the software open source (perhaps utilizing GNUe) so that the
software can have a longevity that outlasts me.

While none of these decisions are final (and may not be decided for some
months yet since other projects are on the go as well) I thought it
might be helpful for you to hear that GNUe is a consideration. The
biggest downside currently is that not all of the base tools are ready
to give a convincing proof of the viability of this particular open
source solution.

I've also been considering writing a Gtk+/Gnome based visual report
designer apart from work for my own usage. It would likely be possible
that this tool could be reused as the basis of the reporting engine for
the project I described above. And that brings me to the point of this
e-mail: GNUe reports.

I haven't given too much thought to the overall design of the report
structure yet but I see there has been some work done in this area
already. I'd like to throw out a few more ideas that I would really like
to see taken into consideration when designing a flexible reporting
system.

- I have had to make several different reports where information is
summarized by one field, seperated into particular groups and then
displayed in columns to the right of the field. More generally, this
would be a horizontal grouping which sometimes (often) needs to
automatically attach to the correct column.

ie.             Jan     Feb     Mar     
Customer        $1      $2      $1.5

While this can be similar to an Excel pivottable it can also be
something like this:

                Value_A         Value_B         Value_C
Customer 1      x               x
Customer 2                      x               x

Where Value_A is actually all possible values of another field displayed
in full as column headings. This is a one (customer) to many
relationship expanded and showing some value summarized from the 'many'
table.

- The ordering of items on a report is frequently requested to be
tweaked and rarely in the same order. ie. "alphabetical but show this
one first". Some quick method such as entering in a known column value
with a placement marker would be very useful. Without this it is often
necessary to create an Excel report so that the values can be resorted,
redisplayed, etc...

- As briefly discussed on this list in March, the ability to preserve
formulas when outputting to Gnumeric/Excel would be very nice. This is
probably most critical for subtotals since they are frequently used with
autofilter to provide a basic tool to explore the data with details. In
fact Excel is often used to provide analysis reports which can be played
with, graphed, etc... If raw data is imported into Excel w/o formulas
frequently it is necessary to create a macro to format the raw data and
add in formulas, etc. since everytime the report is run the same
formulas are needed... In short, reports with formulas are used all of
the time.

- Absolute and relative positioning should both be allowed. They can
easily coexist and each serves a useful purpose. I'd like to see the
report defined in layers and have different types of layers. Some would
be fixed position (ie. headers, footers, watermarks, ...) which could be
repeated on certain pages (ie. all/odd/even), others free flowing from
the point where they begin until the data runs out, ...
--- Of the top of my head I can't see why the sample report displayed on
GNUe now, or a pre-printed form or labels couldn't all be done with the
same tool...fixed text for a dotmatrix might be a little more tricky to
fit into this model.
- I have a few more ideas that might make what I'm saying more concrete
but I don't have time to type them up right now.
- Any layer could be reusable. Not every layer would have a dynamic data
source.

- Many reports seem to lack one small detail which necessitates
recreating the entire thing in a more accessible and manipulatable form.
Some ability for filtering the report before it is output would be
useful (ie. via python)

Sorry for the mess. I wanted to get this sent out today and as a result
you find this a little incoherent. My apologies.
Patrick