Amen! I don't think I would want to go back to 9600 baud serial
communications, though. My first Reality "job" was contract programming
for a local service bureau, using an ADDS Viewpoint terminal and 300
baud acoustical coupler. They handed me the terminal, modem and a set of
manuals and said "Have fun!". Dang, now I'm telling my age!
EasyCalc ran on Reality as well. Of course, it went the way of many of
the other dinosaurs. Now EasyCalc Googles to a scientific calculator on
SourceForge. I acquired the source code and rights to redistribute, but
that never went anywhere.
If memory serves, Compusheet used a lot of abs frames for speed. EC was
all Data/Basic. It was a bit slow recalculating a series of 600+
spreadsheets from the bottom up. The others in IT (then called Data
Processing) didn't think I would be able to get it to work at all, but
it did. The sheets drilled all the way down to class enrollment and
paperclip counts, and rolled it all up to a top level , which they used
to feed their GL.
I probably should have taken this [OT], but I didn't know what effect
changing the subject would have.
Charlie
On 02-07-2012 9:52 AM, Dianne Ackerman wrote:
Hm, don't remember EasyCalc, but Compusheet was on a Reality system.
It was so much easier when we only had to know what was native in our
own systems and not be concerned with a million different things to
connect to in the outside world!
-Dianne
On 2/7/2012 10:45 AM, Charlie Noah wrote:
Hi Dianne,
You're telling your age here! ;^)
Actually, it was EasyCalc, which was probably very similar to
Compusheet.
Charlie
On 02-07-2012 9:30 AM, Dianne Ackerman wrote:
Compusheet? I remember working with that!
-Dianne
On 2/7/2012 6:50 AM, Charlie Noah wrote:
Hi Bob,
I don't suppose CrowFlite can be obtained these days, can it? It
looks like Phil has retired. If it were available, would it work
with the newer versions of Excel? What about Open Office?
In the 80s I worked for a university in Florida, where we used a
Pick-based spreadsheet modeled after Lotus 123. I built a series of
spreadsheets which reached down into every aspect of the
university's database, giving upper management an up to the minute
view of the school's financial picture. I think it ended up being
over 600 spreadsheets, but hey, fund accounting is complicated and
we did still have the 32K limit.
Fond memories. ;^)
Regards,
Charlie Noah
Tiny Bear's Wild Bird Store
"Everything For The Backyard Bird Enthusiast, Except For The Birds"
Info, Forum: http://www.TinyBearMarketing.com
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On 02-06-2012 10:57 PM, Bob Rasmussen wrote:
Makes one long for CrowFlite, doesn't it?
For those that don't remember, CrowFlite was an add-in to Excel that
allowed it, at a per-cell level, to "reach back" into a Pick
database and
grab individual pieces of data. In other words, it was a "pull"
solution
as well as a "push".
I'm cc'ing its creator, Phil Gerber, so he can reminisce about the
past
while reveling in the sights among the mountains of Oregon :-)
On Mon, 6 Feb 2012, Tony Gravagno wrote:
Not responding to any particular quote here, just the CSV topic
in general.
Respected colleagues, CSV is not Excel. If you have an end-user
that asks for Excel and you give them a CSV you're just
perpetuating the myth that Pick is a dinosaur. They will gladly
spend tens of thousands of dollars to replace your application
with something that creates real Excel (and PDF) despite the fact
that such things can be attained at low cost or no cost right
now. Trust me, I've seen it happen.
This dove-tails with the reasons why people get 20 people to
support Oracle when they can have 3 working on Pick. The reason
is that the Oracle people say "yes", and give them pretty
reports, when their Pick guys say "no", and give them plain text
in columns and rows and call it "Excel".
Please don't let that happen to you. Be sure you are properly
responding to end-user requests. Just ask them what they do with
the documents after you generate them. If they really just want
raw data, OK. But if they go on to tell you how many days it
takes to reformat the data, assemble the multiple CSVs into a
single workbook, etc, then you have found a great deal of room
for improvement. Yeah, I've been there too.
Off the soapbox, thanks.
T
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