V4RB suggestions/feature requests

[Pedro fp]

G'day Ruslan

[re-sending because 6 hours after sending it doesn't appear to have 
been delivered]

Thank you for reading my suggestions. Given you replied via the list 
should I take it that you would rather feature requests & suggestions 
be posted to the list?

Before I go on to replying here is some more on TextImport & TextExport 
that I forgot to include in my first email of this thread ...

Consider add in something like Data As TextInputStream &/or Data As 
String as alternatives to the File As FolderItem parameter of 
TextImport. This would enable developers to have the files opened, 
examined for headers &/or any other additional content, perform any 
necessary 'cleaning' on the file & pass the result directly to 
TextImport without writing a temp file. This might even eliminate the 
need for the HasHeader property that I suggested because it would make 
the handling of files that do have headers a whole lot easier.

Similarly Data As TextOutputStream &/or Data As String as alternatives 
to the File As FolderItem parameter of TextExport would make writing of 
files with headers &/or other additional content a whole lot simpler.

On Monday, April 7, 2003, at 06:00  AM, Ruslan Zasukhin wrote:

> on 4/6/03 7:04 PM, Pedro fp at mail at pedro.Net.au wrote:
>
>> As I said in my mail to the list I think an optional parameter to
>> ImportText, HasHeader As Boolean, with a default value of false, would
>> be a great improvement. As it is if a developer wants to accommodate
>> files that have headers s/he has to write code to open the file with
>> the header, write a new [temp] file that has no header & then pass 
>> that
>> file to ImportText. Setting a parameter to true when required would be
>> a whole lot simpler.
>
> Agree. I know that some DBMS e.g. Access or Excel,
> Produce this header line.

And also FileMaker Pro & Panorama. FMP has a checkbox in its file 
import dialog for treating the first line as headers or not [I don't 
recall the export case right now] & Panorama has a checkbox for 
including headers in exports [but always treats the first line of 
import files as data thus requiring some handling].

>> What it amounts to is an additional field property [Label As String]
>> that I implement by sub-classing & would like you to add to Valentina.
>> Please consider :)
>
> I think this is VERY specific to YOUR app, and it should not be in 
> generic
> db engine.

For the first time I have cause to disagree with you. In every database 
project I have ever worked on, whether I am developing with Panorama, 
FileMaker, REALdb or Valentina [all the DBs I have used more then 
trivially in order of use] I have found that field names that are 
programmer friendly are not end user friendly. Field labels are my way 
of overcoming this.

I should stress that until my current project my implementations of 
field labels have no functionality attached. They have been labels & 
nothing more. As I stated in my first email on this, my current project 
reads the first line if imported files to determine whether it is a 
header or data. An an end user consideration I have made the field 
labels [as well as field names] acceptable values in this. Even this is 
a minimal functionality, my code simply looks to see if a header value 
is a field label & if it is gets the corresponding field name & 
substitutes that for all subsequent operations.

>  Thank you for ideas.

Thank you for reading them :)

> Let's hope 2.0 will include this features.

:)

Cheers, Pedro :-)

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