On Thu, 06 Apr 2000 16:22:43 MDT, the world broke into rejoicing as
Bryan Larsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:
> What I really want is a way to save views into reports. For example,
> I want a user defined report that gives me my budget status for the last
> 30 days, a report that gives me the "balance" report for the current year,
> et cetera.
That mandates having some sort of data structure to represent "queries,"
perhaps some sort of oversimplified variation on SQL.
Actually, not...
If this stuff is to be stored, it needs *not* to be a language, but
rather to have some sort of "ID/Key" structure.
SAP R/3 has *exactly* this idea, with something known as "variants,"
which are the arguments that you pass in to reports. Variants can be
stored and recalled. They're rather ugly to manage in R/3; I suspect
we can do better.
What this requires is that each of the arguments in a given report
has several things defined:
a) The argument needs to have a "type." Perhaps a date, or a range of
dates. Or a string value. Or a range thereof. Or a list of values.
Anyhoo. TYPE. (make-arg-record 'type 'date)
b) The argument needs to have a NAME, so that it has identity.
We have a date range with:
(make-arg-record 'type 'date 'name "Effective Dates")
c) The argument needs to have value associated with it. Perhaps
like the following:
(make-arg-record 'type 'date 'name "Effective Dates"
'value '((or
(and
(in "1999/01/01" "2000/02/02")
(not "1999/07/08"))
(before "1997/03/02"))))
Which I will admit would be frightening to actually *use.*
And the date should be in the "native" GnuCash format...
Or how about:
(make-arg-record 'type 'string 'name "Account"
'value (regexp "*Income*"))
I'm suggesting a rather zowie representation of the value not so much
with the expectation of seeing it implemented tomorrow as because:
a) R/3 *does* offer some rather flexible options, and that seems a useful
idea (I found it useful at work *today*), and
b) if it gets pigeonholed to *not* be flexible, we might get stuck
with a too-weak implementation that will be too entrenched to
consider future improvements...
Reality may wind up a bit more pedestrian, but start by thinking
powerful...
--
"In other words -- and this is the rock solid principle on which the
whole of the Corporation's Galaxy-wide success is founded -- their
fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial
design flaws." -- HHGTG
[EMAIL PROTECTED] - <http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/framewrk.html>
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