On Tuesday, May 27, 2003, at 08:41 PM, Richard Gaskin wrote:
For the right tool? upwards of $100 depending on feature set, data source diversity, ease of use.
Dan Shafer wrote:
I agree with the analysis that it would be easier to create reports directly in Transcript than to try to mangle an external that would do so. However, if someone came up with a stack/app in Rev that handled most or all reporting functionality sufficiently generically and extensibly, I think it would be a world-beater of an app. I'd buy one for sure!
Here's the deciding question: How _much_ would you pay?
Agreed.I've been looking into this for years, and since I once made my living selling parts to xTalkers I've been trying to find a viable business opportunity with this. Thus far dense clouds, no rain.
It seems printing needs for most Rev folks could be categorized like this:
- Large blocks of text, which can be done with revPrintField
Haven't looked too closely at this, so I can't comment but I'll take your word for it.- Labels and other grid-based layouts, which can be handled with Rev 2.0's Report Generator
Not sure I agree with the last part of your observation. (More below)- Single-page forms, which can be handled by just laying it out and printing the card
- Things not handled by the first three, which are often too weird to be easily generalized, if at all
And that's just layouts. The real power of Reports was in the layout toolsI suspect that if you had one tool that would deal with SQL databases only, which are the most general of the data sources, you could start off quite handily. Over time, customer demand for other data sources would drive spin-off products or versions. I haven't played with Valentina, so I don't know how SQL-similar it is, but perhaps you could offer both in one product if they are similar.
and queries. Layout tools are easy enough -- it's really just the pointer
tool with a palette to bind fields to data.
It's the latter that's hard in Rev if one attempted to write The Ultimate
Printing Tool: where is the data coming from and how is it structured?
With custom props, SQL, Valentina, etc., we're not just talking about
walking through background fields anymore.
Seems to me that if I could buy a great query-manager/report-generator and the tradeoff was I have to store the data I wanted reported on in an SQL database, I'd do it.
<<Snip>>
If we left data gathering up to the user, how many folks would need a toolMy guess is this would be a popular tool but of necessity priced well below Revolution's price point and therefore perhaps not very interesting from a margin perspective.
that does just formatting? And again, how much would they pay?
So one challenge from a business perspective is that it must be priced low
enough to make it worth buying instead making a custom solution that does
exactly what you need, but it must be flexible enough to appeal to as many
different developers as possible, with the foreknowledge that some unique
types of reports could not be generalized affordably -- those potential
customers with the most complex printing needs may still need to roll their
own for the hard ones, and those with the simplest needs already have three
types of printing solutions available.
Maybe one key is to design the tool in such a way that it provides a coding framework -- or a set of parameters for a parameter-driven environment -- in which both of those levels of need could be met.
And that's before we start exploring support costs.<<Snip>>
For sure that's an important issue. But it's not unique to this product; it's a software issue all software publishers have to address. There are lots of options here and some of them at least might make sense for this product.
Maybe there's a way to aggregate these solutions into a library that could serve as the basis for a product that just supplies an ever-growing set of templates in a specialized library.
If I can find a way to do this profitably I'd be a fool to turn down the
cash. But thus far the level of effort to generalize and support a
universal printing tool seems likely to cost far more than the aggregate of
writing print routines for the task at hand, many of which use the
preexisting solutions listed above.
-- Richard Gaskin Fourth World Media Corporation Developer of WebMerge 2.2: Publish any database on any site ___________________________________________________________ [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.FourthWorld.com Tel: 323-225-3717 AIM: FourthWorldInc
================================================ Dan Shafer, Author, Consultant, Product Development Expert http://www.shafermedia.com You are nearly 3 times more likely to need a lawyer than a hospital: http://www.prepaidlegal.com/info/danshafer
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