Re: First-class QueryTable support?

[Jonathan DePeri <jonathan deperi gmail com>]

On Sun, Jul 4, 2010 at 10:49 PM, Andreas Guelzow <aguelzow pyrshep ca> wrote:
> On Sun, 2010-07-04 at 22:44 -0400, Jonathan DePeri wrote:
> > I've hardly seen support for queries against external data sources
> > (could be anything, but typically databases) mentioned anywhere. I did
> > find an explanation (at
> > http://www.obviously.com/tech_tips/Loading%20SQL%20Data%20into%20Gnumeric.html)
> > how to run SQL queries and am surprised this is not documented in the
> > manual.
> >
> > Is there any interest in real QueryTable support? I'm sort of a
> > database junkie myself so might possibly be willing to do the
> > implementation...
>
> Hi Jonathan,
>
> in theory databases can be accessed from Gnumeric via gda. (It seems
> that half the time that doesn't work properly since nobody seems to be
> interested in supporting that.) Could you elaborate of what you mean
> with "real QueryTable support"?
>
> Thanks
>
> Andreas

Excel, for example, has QueryTables. You create an "object" that lives
somewhere in a sheet and which when refreshed runs a query on the
external data source and displays the query's result set on the sheet.
I have found this indispensable in working with spreadsheets, since
all the data I work with is stored in a database.

It's evident from just that page I read that some desired features may
be missing from Gnumeric's query interface. The fact that it's
completely undocumented also led me to wonder whether it's still being
designed/developed.

Jonathan