SUMMARY: Report-writer info

I didn't really get enough responses to summarize, so I've just included excerpts from the responses I did get. The original article preceeds the excerpts.

Thanks to those who responded!

>Sorry to cross-post, but it seemed the best way to get the whole audience.
>
>I'm looking for relatively objective descriptions and/or evaluations
>of various report writer s/w for UNIX. Product comparisons would be
>even better. I'm particularly interested in the following:
>
>(a) R & R 's Report writer
>(b) Oracle's Report writer
>(c) Ingres' Report writer
>(d) Informix's Report writer
>(e) Sybase's Report writer
>(f) dBase's Report writer
>(g) Foxpro's Report writer
>
>
>I'm not even sure they all exist - I was asked to look for the info by
>someone else. Other report writers are of interest, too.
>
>I'd appreciate pointers to FAQs, archives, recent articles in
>alternative media such as magazines :-) and evaluations you may have
>put together, too. Although marketing material from the specific
>companies would be OK, I'll probably take it with a grain of salt.
>
>Thanks for taking interest in this article.

russell_at_atl.sofkin.ca:
I just finished a review of FoxFire!, which is a report writer for FoxPro that is written entirely in FoxPro. It allows the user to generate ad-hoc reports quite easily. For a copy of the review and for a demo of FoxFire!, FTP to nstn.ns.ca (137.186.128.11) and have a look in /pub/pc-stuff/foxpro.

podell_at_aol.com:
You should look at IQ from IQ software, Norcross, Georgia. It is a functional one that has access from UNIX nad Windows. We just started using it.

slitel_at_ri.cadre.com:
Check out a product called Intelligent Query from Program Intelligence They will work with most of you requested software. They are at 404-446-8880. The guy I deal with is Alan at X 512 (sales person) Tell him I told you to call and you are interested in a working demo!

nigelc_at_cognos.com:
There was also a recent review in DBMS for Impromptu - sorry I'm not sure which edition.

rhh_at_tachy.uah.ualberta.ca:
I guess what you think of a report writer depends on what you need to do with it. For my money the INGRES Report Writer is a real work horse with a VERY nice pseudo-rule-based report description language. For me as a down-on-the-bare-metal programmer doing intensive data reduction it is very good (nothing can completely make up for SQL after all, or I would say it is superb). For an end-user wanting to print off a pretty representation of raw data in the database it is totally inadequate; it is not touchy-feely "friendly". It is concise and versatile, but it is a programming language and you have to read the manual to learn it. If you are prepared to use QUEL instead of SQL [...] then it is unmatched, period.

zeitlerj_at_dgabby.mfldclin.edu:
We are an Oracle shop and use SQL*ReportWriter Version 1.1. Its OKAY, but really clunky. It is NOT one of their better products. The good news is that ReportWriter Version 2 is (supposed to be) lightyears ahead of Version 1.1 ... Easier to work with and lots of new functionality ... lots of point and click and dragging ... I have not seen any postings on Oracle List with questions and/or problems with ReportWriter Version 2

p0070623_at_oxford-brookes.ac.uk, regarding Oracle's Report writer: i have been using 1.1 for 2 years and its totally non-intuitive, and very difficult to use.
on the +side - you can use oracle case generators to get the reportwriter code from module definitons which can save a lot of work - you then just pretty it up a bit. but this is only good for simple reports.
v2.x is supposed to be quite a different product but the little post I've seen on it here it has a few problems as well. I get the general impression that 3rd party products are better.

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The above statements may not be the opinions of Brent Lambert.
The first disclaimer is a policy of SPSS Inc.
Subsequent disclaimers are probably the opinion of Brent Lambert.