I have to say amen to Tony's comments. Why try and reinvent the wheel when there is a utility already written? Or throw out some kludgy solution when a native one can be found?
David A. Green (480) 813-1725 DAG Consulting -----Original Message----- From: u2-users-boun...@listserver.u2ug.org [mailto:u2-users-boun...@listserver.u2ug.org] On Behalf Of Tony Gravagno Sent: Monday, February 06, 2012 8:06 PM To: u2-users@listserver.u2ug.org Subject: Re: [U2] Building an Excel File 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 _______________________________________________ U2-Users mailing list U2-Users@listserver.u2ug.org http://listserver.u2ug.org/mailman/listinfo/u2-users _______________________________________________ U2-Users mailing list U2-Users@listserver.u2ug.org http://listserver.u2ug.org/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
