Hi everyone, I'm thinking about using Dabo as a replacement for Foxpro, and I'm curious if Dabo has the following features, which I currently use FoxPro for. My main reason is Python is fairly good at handing Unicode and doing more complex calculations on data stored in a database. I have _lots_ of rows (tens of thousands). I have to clean up this data sometimes or mark it--basically I need editing to be _fast_. Editing ten thousand rows based on 1-3 second human decision making _is_ feasible, but I don't want to have to spend a couple of hours making some interface for it first, especially when it's going to happen only once with a particular set of data.
FoxPro is very good, I think, at the following: 1. Foxpro functions and SQL mix freely. Using pysqlite2, we have to register functions. That's fine, but one of the annoying things about writing your SQL inside of quotes is that there is no code completion, i.e. wait till the program runs before you made some small little error (maybe you don't always write sqlite SQL and you are confused by dialect differences). Does Dabo help out with registering the functions? Does it check my SQL? If it does, does it know to look at the registered functions as part of the SQL syntax? 2. Foxpro is excellent at displaying data for editing. I regularly have tables of tens of thousands of rows, but it doesn't croak because the table is big. How does Dabo's fare? I can do things easily like add a column or move a column to the front (though it doesn't save this for me and I think it should). I'd like to edit data right in the table just like in Foxpro or an Excel file because I often get dirty data and have to clean it up. 3. I need good internationalization support. I would prefer warnings when the data cannot be all displayed properly in my local code page (if I'm on windows). I'd like unicode support (I expect this is built into Dabo given that it's written in Python). It's not like Foxpro is perfect. There are a couple features regarding viewing and editing that I'd like to be able to use: 1. I'd like to write selects and edit that data and have it save back to the original table too. (Without having to write more SQL) 2. I'd like to click on a column heading and sort based on a row. Click again and get order by desc. I don't want another table or a view or a cursor or anything. I just want to edit the results and have the results saved directly in my original table. If the sort might take a long time, maybe pop up a dialog progress box and allow me to cancel. (Foxpro has a nice progress bar for queries). So what do you think? Can Dabo help me out here? If not, could I write a database viewer in Dabo that could allow me to easily do this? I much prefer writing Python to writing anything besides SQL in Foxpro, and overall it is my preferred programming language. I'm really interested in Dabo because I think Microsoft gets a bad rap these days, but unlike the authors of Dabo, some people don't realize how much convenience some Microsoft products can give you. International support in open source products can be a joke and a decent IDE can be a great help. Again, one of the most annoying things about writing SQL inside of Python are the little mistakes you make--SQL dialects are varied and you may have to deal with more than one. Well, I'd greatly appreciate any help. Cheers, A _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/dabo-users
