The best compliment I ever received from using R:Base was because R:Base
includes capacities that just are not there in anything else, and
included it from the early days. When system 2.11 came out, with the
first SQL command set, Microrim sent out a mailing to every accountant
in the world, I think. USA and Canaada at least. We could get the latest
and greatest for $149. I bought it, and spent years learning it with the
help of a whole bunch of people on one of the ancestors of this list,
run by a gentleman whose last name was Bass, if I remember correctly.
The year was 1989. I was running R:Base for OS/2 v 2.11.
The scenario:
I created an R:Base database and code to track movement and stockpiling
of coal in the mine here in Sparwood. I was one of four cost
accountants. The mine dispatch system was one of those lovely systems
that had no way to export data. The mine produced 6,000,000 tons of
metallurgical coal a year and used over 50 trucks with capacities from
170 to 350 tons to move the coal within the mine. All the dispatch
system did was keep track of equipment movements. We worked out that the
system could print a report of all the movements to file.
At the end of each month the production people printed the report to a
text file. It usually ran about 3.5 - 6 Mb. I wrote a program that
brought the report into an R:Base database, stripped out all lines that
were not production or transportation lines, such as sub totals, page
titles, etc., parsed the remainder and produced a report that said how
much coal was produced by seam and quality, and all the movements of the
coal to and from each stockpile by shovel, loader and truck, and how
much of each stockpile was sent to the plant. To this, we added the
plant production figures and the shipment amounts to come up with the
month end inventory, stockpile by stockpile. Surveyors surveyed the
piles of coal, and we reconciled all the figures. The process took half
a day, including the two and a half hours R:Base took to process the
information.
The compliment:
The chief engineer came to me after we had been doing this for half a
year or so and asked if we could run the report in the middle of one
month. They had a special order to produce and needed to know where the
component coals were. Engineers coming to the Cost Accountants for
information? You gotta be kidding. We did it for them.
Albert
