[reportlab-users] platypus

[Tim Roberts]

On Thu, 27 Jul 2006 13:11:23 UT, boban chop <chop at malmo2.net> wrote:

>I am a newbie in raportlab tools (since yesterday... :-)) and I need som 
>help before I getting in to...
>I want to generate telephone catalog and I wondering, what is the best 
>(or easiest) source of data to generate from,  XML or some kind of 
>database (like SQLite)?. I have 7-8 column and approximately 10,000 
>telephones...
>thanks for any suggestions
>  
>

The answer is really filled with personal preferences and religious
issues.  In my not-so-humble opinion, XML is great for shipping stuff
between programs.  It is not great as a database format; it's too bulky,
and the query tools are too inefficient.

Your choice of data store is dependent on how you expect to manipulate
the data.  For example, if you want to use Excel to edit the data, you
could store it in a comma-separated file.  Python has built-in support
for that (import csv).  However, you still have no "query" support.  You
could even use a native Excel file and use ODBC to query it, but I don't
think that's very natural.  If you want to use Access to manipulate the
file and do reports, them you could use an Access mdb file; there are
several good modules for querying Access files.

I'm a big fan of SQLite.  The minor downside is that it doesn't come
with a GUI.  If you are comfortable with SQL, you can use the sqlite3
command line as your data entry tool.  I've done several of my small
databases in SQLite, with a simple CherryPy script and a couple of
Cheetah templates as my front-end.

Another alternative is Dabo, which can automatically generate simple
front-ends for several different database formats.

-- 
Tim Roberts, timr at probo.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.