Dave Page wrote:
Right, let me give you a quick rundown on whats /currently/ there as
this may affect how things can potentially work with the factories.
- pgObject and each derived class return a report menu for the current
object using GetReportMenu (in pgObject) and GetObjectReportMenu (in the
derived class)
- Standard reports (ie. Properties, stats, dependencies) are implemented
in pgObject. To avoid code duplication and ease the chore of adding new
properties, rather than reimplement functions like
ShowStatistics/ShowDepends in report format, we simply pass a pointer to
the listview control on frmMain to
frmReport::AddReportTableFromListView(), which creates a table in the
rpeort mimicing the list view.
- Object list reports are only apppropriate in pgCollections of course,
and thus are implemented at that level.
- Object specific reports (currently there are none, but a Table Data
Dictionary is first on my list) would be implemented in the appropriate
object class.
ok
Now, for the future...
Reimplementing the menus making full use of the factories should not be
a problem.
You mentioned implementing reports in frmReport. That seems wrong as it
means that it will need intimate knowledge of each object type. It seems
to me that this info should be encapsulated within the object or one of
it's base classes such that frmReport remains generic, and
object-specific code is self contained.
Well, so far there's no object specific stuff. I'd prefer object
extensions that are not rendering/output format specific, and thus don't
call back frmReport methods but merely deliver the data for frmReport to
render.
That said, the generic reports that are there now could go in frmReport
as they only need knowledge of frmMain (which I see is passed to
StartDialog anyway). This would also work for the list reports that are
currently in pgCollection as that can be tested through IsCollection().
Sound reasonable? Anything important I obviously haven't thought about?
Sounds ok.
In related news, the scripts look handy, but don't seem to work if there
is only one script option on the menu,
Hu, thanks. Will fix.
and the report options are being
repeated now, though that doesn't really matter of course.
I already removed some of that new object style handling stuff, probably
failed to put it in back when backing out my menu change attempt.
I still do have a little problem of the overall feature. I do understand
the need for reports, but the current approach seems quite limited to
me. In general, I'd expect that reports on single objects are not too
helpful; a quick glance at a property window should be enough in most
cases. I'd expect something like "list details on all functions in
schema A and all sequences and tables in schema B" as typical
requirement for a report on an application's db schema definition,
probably embedded in some explaining text, and with a table of contents,
printed as PDF. This is quite hardly done from report snippets that are
rendered full HTML.
It could work like this:
- generate XML report snippets on everything needed in a directory, or
appended to a common file.
- When all snippets are collected, render it to whatever is desired with
XSL.
I don't object having a "made HTML" option as it is now, but this would
mean a second output option, and we certainly won't like to have all
objects with specific reporting facilities recoded each time a new
output format is introduced; a good reason to deliver data only from
objects, not made lines of report.
Regards,
Andreas
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