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Access to Rebol forms converter

 [1/5] from: james:mustard at: 28-Sep-2003 16:14


Hi all, Currently at work we deal in a lot of legacy Access databases and we are in the process of creating an Access plugin to convert forms into REBOL/view and PHP objects. We already have shifted the majority of our data backends to SQL Server, or MySQL and Access Forms is the only weak-point remaining (they crash and corrupt at random moments which is rather disconcerting). http://rebol.mustard.co.nz/rebtemplates.zip This a link to a sample database and templates for form sizing and label conversion into Rebol. How it works is that the ExportModule is added to any Access database containing forms you want to convert (along with an ExportToRebol macro) and then once the macro is run it inspects each form and its controls and outputs a text file that can be run by rebol/view. At present this is output to the same directory as the database as frm[form_name].txt files. For those without Access, the module code can be found here: http://rebol.mustard.co.nz/rebTemplates/ExportForm_Module_code.txt (the code module is also included inside the zip file as a text file). Hopefully by the end of next month we will have all the conversion templates completed and available to those on-list who are interested. Regarding licensing etc - still to be decided but probably LGPL. Regards, James.

 [2/5] from: brett:codeconscious at: 28-Sep-2003 15:40


James Marsden wrote:
> Currently at work we deal in a lot of legacy Access databases and we are
in the
> process of creating an Access plugin to convert forms into REBOL/view and
PHP
> objects.
... Hi James, Sounds like a really interesting project. I'm certainly interested to hear of how things proceed. Are you using ODBC between the new REBOL/View forms and the back ends or something else? Did you replace any Access reports and if so what did you use? Regards, Brett.

 [3/5] from: james::mustard::co::nz at: 28-Sep-2003 21:11


Quoting Brett Handley <[brett--codeconscious--com]>:
> Sounds like a really interesting project. I'm certainly interested to hear > of how things proceed. Are you using ODBC between the new REBOL/View forms > and the back ends or something else? > Did you replace any Access reports and if so what did you use? >
Currently we're using Doc's MySQL protocol to link Rebol/View forms to MySQL. We've trialled using PDF Forms / mailmerge docs for an Access forms replacement and it seems to work rather well (Thats with Adobe's PDF tools - this however limits us to Windows). Other possibilities we have looked at are an OpenOffice / StarOffice mailmerge for reports. The bonus being that it lets us run hybrid systems while changing clients from Windows to Linux. A custom reports engine was looked at but it seemed to be a large expense with very little benefit that we cannot get more easily from another source. Regards, James

 [4/5] from: brett:codeconscious at: 29-Sep-2003 10:54


Always interesting to read this sort of thing. Thanks for your response. Regards, Brett.

 [5/5] from: AJMartin:orcon at: 29-Sep-2003 21:26


> For those without Access, the module code can be found here: > http://rebol.mustard.co.nz/rebTemplates/ExportForm_Module_code.txt > > (the code module is also included inside the zip file as a text file).
Case cvRebol h = "REBOL [" & vbCrLf & _ vbTab & "Title: {" & frmName & "}" & vbCrLf & _ vbTab & "Author: {ACC-2-REBOL}" & vbCrLf & _ vbTab & "Date: " & Format(Date, "yyyy-mm-dd") & vbCrLf & _ vbTab & "Version: 0.1" & vbCrLf & _ vbTab & "Description: {Form export from MS Access to REBOL}" & vbCrLf & _ vbTab & "History: " & vbCrLf & _ "]" & vbCrLf & _ "frm" & Replace(frmName, " ", "_") & ": make face [size: @size@ offset: @offset@ edge: none pane: copy [] color: @detail_color@" & vbCrLf h = Replace(h, "@size@", pixelSize(Forms(frmName).Width) & "x" & pixelSize(Forms(frmName).detail.Height)) h = Replace(h, "@offset@", "system/view/screen-face/size / 2 - (self/size / 2)") h = Replace(h, "@detail_color@", rebColor(Forms(frmName).detail.BackColor)) f = interrogateControls(frmName, cvLang) interrogateForm = h & f & "] view frm" & frmName I sense the need for 'compose here. :) Andrew J Martin ICQ: 26227169 http://www.rebol.it/Valley/ http://valley.orcon.net.nz/ http://Valley.150m.com/