InfoQube IM - Community

Submitted by JJSlote on 2009/12/11 23:33

Didn't want to clutter up a Book thread, but must say I'm eagerly anticipating the Live Link capability soon to reach prerelease.

You may recall I was looking for an analysis matrix modeled on the Calendar. Should have figured out that Excel allows the user to place shape objects on the grid, with data echoed from cell addresses. Now the cells will be populated with live data centrally maintained in InfoQube. Precisely what I was looking for.

Consider a well-designed matrix like this one (just grabbed off the web), and suppose the descriptions were maintained in IQ:

Orig: http://www.alighterme.com/docs/comparison_chart.jpg

You can see the advantage of displaying these items on floating rectangles, rather than trying to build the display table around cell content, particularly content externally sourced. We can easily pick and choose from among the Items returned from the IQ query, and rearrange to fit the format.

This is going to be a real aid to visual problem solving, and I'll be running these links all the time.

Pierre, thanks always for making IQ world class.

Jerome

Comments

Pre-Rel4 is now available. Keep us posted, what you're doing is truly amazing!

Greetings Pierre

In case you missed it in the back page of the PreRel1 thread...the ODC data link isn't working in Excel 2007. It throws the message: "Unable to open or read the connection file. Either the file has been damaged, or the file format is not valid." Armando's getting a similar message in Word 2003.

Jerome

Could you provide me with a working .odc file for Excel 2007 ? To create one, in the Import Data dialog, there should be something like:

Click on New Source
Select Other/Advanced
Select Microsoft Jet 4.0 OLE DB Provider, click Next
Select a database. You can use an MDB file or try using your actual .SNDB one
Select a specific table. If using an .SNDB file, you'll see your grids listed, select one. Click Next
Choose a file name and click Finish

Thanks!

Yes, that works! Exciting to see it load in Excel. Attached is a Zip with both the successful (shopping list) and unsuccessful ODC file.

Jerome

Great !

However, the ThoughtModel.odc file was empty.

That's the one generated in IQ. I've just generated another ODC from another grid and added it to the zip, attached. Same effect.

Is this fixed in pre-rel7 ? I have no idea why the generated .odc file is empty... You're using the portable or installable flavors?

[quote=Pierre_Admin]

Is this fixed in pre-rel7 ? I have no idea why the generated .odc file is empty... You're using the portable or installable flavors?

[/quote]

Not fixed. Where prerel5 created empty files, in pre-rels 6 and 7, the msg box reads: "Error creating file: {path}{filename}.odc". Same message irrespective of whether file already exists. I used installable for 6, portable for 7.

Jerome

Strange... Do you have a non-empty file named ODCTemplate.odc in the folder AppFiles ?

No, no such file.

JJS

Ah! There you have it... This file is in the portable zip file but somehow you don't have it. Could you try to reinstall?

Yep, that did it. Unzipped the portable pre-6 and moved the ODC into the folder with pre-7. And the link works effortlessly compared to the "Advanced" set-up of the ODC in Excel.

Thanks for the fix.

Jerome