Converting Reports

rbuser

I'm in the process of converting several programs from using the
BDE/Paradox to Advantage database tables and I've run into a wall.

The older BDE based programs were done in D4 with RB6.x while the new
programs are done in D7 with RB7. The templates for the reports are
stored in database tables and not stand-alone .rtm files.

The reports do not work. I'm guessing that there is database type
information (e.g. BDE or ADS) and table names (e.g. Table.DB or
Table.ADT) stored within the report templates. Maybe even a few other
things stored in them.

Does anyone have any pointers for how to convert these reports? I'm
using a conversion program to read from the Paradox tables into the
Advantage tables--straight table/column matching. Is there some way of
tweaking the data before writing it to the Advantage table?

Any help is much appreciated! Thanks!
rob

nicocizik

Hi Rob,

It is on our to do list to create an easier way to convert templates to work
with other databases. For now the easiest way is to extract one of your old
reports and save it to file as ASCII text. Then using a blank report,
recreate the old one from scratch using the new database connectivity. Next
view the two template files as ASCII text and compare the differences (i.e.
names of the query and dataview objects particularly) and see if you can
convert the old one by hand. Once you successfully do this, you will know
exactly what needs to be done to convert all your other templates and you
can use the technique used in the example below to extract the text of a
template in your database, edit it, and save it back to the same spot in
your database all in one step.

http://www.digital-metaphors.com/tips/EditTemplatesAsText.zip

--

rbuser

Nico,

Thanks for that. I was able to convert a report by hand as you
suggested, and it worked! I'll have to play around with the example
code this weekend and next week to see if I can get it to fit into what
I'm doing. It looks like the hardest part is not going to be changing
references such as daBDE.... to daADS...., but instead actually
inserting a line to indicate the new SQLType.

Can't thank you enough. I had visions of thousands of people
complaining because they had to recreate their reports. I probably
should not have used the BDE to begin with. Curses to Borland for
deprecating it!

rob