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From: steve@violet.berkeley.edu (Steve Goldfield)
Newsgroups: comp.databases,comp.lang.misc,comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: need help choosing between INGRESS and PROGRESS
Keywords: INGRESS, PROGRESS
Message-ID: <24295@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 11 May 89 16:20:36 GMT
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I haven't used PROGRESS, but I can confirm the weakness
of Ingres' report writer.

First of all, it is limited to a single retrieve, so if
you need to report information from more than one table
(as you do in any well-designed relational database), you
have to first do a retrieve outside the report into a table
just for the report. (Example: You have names in one
table, addresses in a second, and phone numbers in a third.
You have to combine these into a single table prior to
running a report on that table.)

Second, there are no flags or, more generally, user-controlled
variables to control flow in the report. (Example: you want
something to happen only on page one, like suppressing a
page number in the footer.) The only thing like a variable
is information read in at run time from a terminal.

Third, you can count or compute other aggregations, but you can
only count everything inside a report. You can't count on a where
condition. (Example: I wanted to report all employees of a
company in our database and count the number of those who
were alumni of this institution. I couldn't do it in the
report. I had to do it in quel.)

These are just the most annoying weaknesses that leap immediately
to mind. Naturally, you could overcome all of them by writing
a report in C. What really gets me going is that all of the above
facilities and more were available in dBASE II on my Kaypro 2.

Steve Goldfield