[Gnue] Re: Antw: report IDL

[Rodrigo Moya]

> The ReportEngine interface is pretty obvious. What about the possibility to 
> add a description string for the report?
> 
yes, good idea!

> With the Report interface, I have some problems:
> 
> - what does run do?
>
it runs the report, returning the generated XML

> -- Does it return the unprocessed XML string 
> -- or the report, populated with data in XML-format?
> 
the report, populated with data, in a special XML format which is
understable
by clients

> The first wouldn't need any parameters, 
>
> the second could be done with format = CONVERTER_TO_XML.
> 
> Or do I totally missunderstand it?
>
I think it would need parameters, since for example, you may want to
have a report to show
the hours worked by the employees in a given month and year. So, month
and
year would be those parameters 

Although as you say, it could be changed to:

any run (in ParamList params, in Converter format);

thus removing the need for the convert method. BTW, I've used "any" for
this, but the best would be to create another interface (or struct) to
manage the returned data).

> 
> IMO the report designer only needs the addReport method to save a new or
> modified report and a method
> string getReport(in string rep_name)
> to read an existing report.
> 
well, not a bad idea. Then, the functions to manage this XML file could
be added
to a common lib for both the report engine and report clients (in this
case,
the designer).

I'll get more input and then I'll send another version of the IDL with
all the things that we discuss.

cheers