reports (clarification)

[Rodrigo Moya <rodrigo linuxave net>]

Hi all!

Well, as I've done sometimes, I had a look this morning at the GNUe IRC
logs, and I saw there some comments from Derek which convinced me to
write this mail. As I think we're suffering from a big misunderstanding,
here are some clarifications:

* I (rodrigo) am the ONLY maintainer of gnome-db/libgda. By this, I
don't mean that I am a dictator and that everything is made after my
thoughts, but that the final decision is mine. This means that even if
you read a mail in gnome-db list saying that the report engine would be
made in some way, this does not mean that gnome-db/libgda has decided
so, but that a given person states a given opinion. Of course, if
somebody wants to be the gnome-db maintainer, just say it, and we'll
talk about it.
* and, I thought we had agreed the other day about the general report
structure, so here is what I understood, please correct me if it's a
mistake:
- no one is working on the DTD, this has been abandoned (for the moment,
since it's not a bad idea to have a DTD AS SOON AS the XML report format
is finished, but not before of course).
- current work is on making a basic IDL to start writing the report
engine. As soon as we agree on this, the report engine and the clients
can start. As you may have noticed, I started very simply to add other
things as soon as we code and need them.
- there will be a XML format to describe a report, that is, not the
output, but the structure. This format, I guess, could be the one
produced in the current gda-report.dtd file, since I think it's been
discussed deeply, although I confess I haven't participated too much on
that thread, so maybe a new revision by everybody can be made.
- this XML format will be processed by the report engine (not the
client), which will get the data either from GDA (default one) or from
another source (by means of plugins maybe) to produce a XML output
format, where the data is actually formatted in another special XML
format. As we said, gda-report will be made libgda-independent, so that
anybody could add a different way of accessing its data by just writing
a plugin. This will be the case for GNUe, isn't it?
- then, clients will ask the report engine for this XML output, or for a
given format, such as PDF, PS, HTML, etc This conversion, as Derek
suggested, could be made though a customized jade
- the report engine will have a sort of cache to return repetitive
reports, etc
- apart from this, but outside of the report engine, will be report
clients and designers, which, of course, won't be started seriously
until an IDL is approved. This part is, I think, the one Carlos is
talking about.

I have not entered technical discussions about each point since this
will go the next set of mails. But one thing I'm sure about is that GNUe
and GNOME-DB/libgda should work together on this, it would be a pity to
have a separation, so please just say what you don't agree and we'll
discuss it. But really, I thought we had agreed on all this.

cheers