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From: robf@squid.rtech.com (Robert Fair)
Newsgroups: comp.databases,comp.lang.misc,comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: need help choosing between INGRESS and PROGRESS
Keywords: INGRESS, PROGRESS
Message-ID: <2894@rtech.rtech.com>
Date: 12 May 89 14:10:37 GMT
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>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.)

This  is not really correct - the RETRIEVE/ SELECT is a  full function
query, so you can use joins, subqueries, views etc to access more  than
one table in the report.  However, I agree that only a single query
can be annoying sometimes.
>
>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.

The report writer has had flow control(IF-THEN-ELSEIF-ELSE-ENDIF) for
a long while. Release 6 has real variables, with data types, NULLability
attributes etc.

>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.)

Wrong. You can count etc over any break in the report, or print
cumulative values throughout the report.  Your example, to print
the number of alumni in each instituion might be written as:

	.FOOT institution
		.print "Number of alumni in instituion ", 
			institution, " is ", count(alumni)

which is pretty easy.
>
>Steve Goldfield

Robert Fair
RTI Tech Support