The PDF file is far too large for Acrobat to handle comfortably using normal techniques. You can also purchase a printed copy of this handbook (loose-leaf, 3 hole punched, 8.5" by 11" sheets) for $84.95. The Panorama Handbook is a 1,796-page Adobe Acrobat PDF file. However, if you adjust the window size and position, you can have Panorama remember it by checking the “Save window positions” option in the Save dialog box. #PANORAMA X RELATIONAL DATABASE WINDOWS#You cannot set a default size or position for Data Sheet or Design Sheet windows in new database documents. The page up, page down, home, and end keys do not work with the vertical scroll bars in text display SuperObjects. This could be fixed by doing anything that redraws the window (such as minimizing and then expanding it). The new windows would leave fine dotted lines outlining their previous positions. I encountered minor screen redrawing problems when opening and moving or closing database windows in front of existing Panorama windows. (In Text objects, fill color affects the background color.) Fill color affects text and border color, but doesn’t change the background color. Text Display SuperObjects can have borders and fill patterns, but the borders don’t respond to changes in line thickness, line pattern, or fill pattern. Editing text/rectangle combinations has always been a pain in Panorama. This omission is quite strange and requires you to place text objects within rectangles if you wish to put a border around the text. Text objects in forms cannot have borders. #PANORAMA X RELATIONAL DATABASE PRO#FileMaker Pro 4 lagged far behind Panorama, especially with the large database. Excel did slightly better than Panorama 4 in the first test, but 65,535 is the maximum number of rows in an Excel file. It was nearly twice as fast as Panorama 4. In both sorting tests, Panorama 3 won the speed tests. Panorama 4 fared better than 3 in the lookup test, but again lagged far behind FileMaker Pro (which used a true relational linkage rather than a lookup) and Excel. Both were blown away by Excel’s lightning fast crosstab speed. Panorama 4 was slightly slower than Panorama 3. FileMaker Pro does not perform crosstabulations and couldn’t be tested. Panorama was remarkably faster than FileMaker Pro and Excel at importing text files. The results appear below (all times are in seconds): Speed Test The second test database contained nearly 280,000 records. The first test database was a larger version (65,535 records) of my 22-field data set. Next, I performed two sorting speed tests. #PANORAMA X RELATIONAL DATABASE CODE#The lookup test used the same database and used a 5-character code to look up a client name from a second database with 777 names (and the same 5 character codes). I performed crosstabulations by day (there were 22 days) and by a field containing 1 of 5 categories. The first test was speed of importing the tab-delimited text file using default options. My initial test file was a medium-sized database of 22 fields with 21,668 records. ProVue Development claims improved speeds over version 3, so I expected fast results. I compared Panorama 4 to Panorama 3.1.5, FileMaker Pro 4, and Excel 9.0.1 (from Microsoft Office 2001). Years ago when Macintosh computers were based on Motorola 680x0 chips, Panorama was the undisputed speed champ of flat file databases. For example, I have used PanTalk to trigger an AppleScript that opens a mainframe text file, cleans it up with BBEdit, saves it, then turns control back over to Panorama for appending data, performing calculations and lookups, preparing and printing reports, and exporting data for input into a group of Excel worksheets and charts (that are opened by another AppleScript called by PanTalk). By combining PanTalk with AppleScript, multi-application automation is possible. Extensive automation within your database is possible using PanTalk alone. More complex procedures require knowledge of the PanTalk language (which resembles Pascal). Procedures are activated in one of four ways: the Action menu, a form button, automatically at startup or when a certain window opens, or when called from another procedure or from an AppleScript. Like crosstabs, procedures are viewed and edited in a unique window. Procedures can be created by recording steps or by writing PanTalk scripts. Procedures are written in Panorama’s unique programming language, PanTalk. Crosstabulation display window from setup above
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |