Submitted by jan_rifkinson on 2009/04/20 08:37
As I was  browsing the most recent Outliner Forum posts, I came across an article on EccoPro + webcapture extension which led me back to the EccoPro extensions forum, etc.  I was amazed by what seems to be available for this venerable program which many of us used so many years ago. Now that it's open source, it's almost like an APP store has opened to service EccoPro, bringing what was an advanced program for it's day into the 21st century.  Bottom line,  I'm wondering -- at the end of the day -- exactly how IQ will differntiate itself from all that.  Part of IQ development seems to be re-inventing the wheel but I'm sure it is more advanced / sophisticated but I wonder how that translates into it's practical use by most users who are looking for a calendar + single pane outliners.   Sometimes I feel like I'm waiting for stuff here that already exists in EccoPro. Maybe I'm wrong but thought it might be worth the discussion.  Hopefully this post is not seen as improper  or rude to Pierre who is immensly talented & supportive to all of us.
 
--
Jan Rifkinson
Ridgefield CT USA

Comments

You're not being rude Jan. The Outliner forum did discuss this a bit, but the greatest Ecco resource is the Ecco_Pro Yahoo group. There YSWT is investing a huge amount of time in supporting users and working on extending the venerable Ecco. Two major pieces of work has been done in the last 2-3 years:
  1. EccoExt, by Slangmgh
  2. Ecco Magic by YSWT
I won't go into details as to what these bring to Ecco, checkout the forum if you wish. Ecco and IQ share some goals (outlining with columns) but have some important conceptual differences:
  • Ecco enforces rigid hierarchy, in IQ anything is allowed, from multiple parents to recursion
  • Ecco data is only accessible via DDE, any ODBC app can access IQ data
  • Ecco has very very limited Gantt
  • Ecco is much more polished... and IQ is aiming at achieving the same

jan_rifkinson

2009/04/20 09:55

Permalink

Thanks, Pierre.  I searched ODBC & understand it to allow common interchange between different databases but could you explain this to me w a practical example, i.e. a real world situation.  Since MS supports this standard, I'm particularly thinking about the transfer of all my data from URp into IQ.
 
--
Jan Rifkinson
Ridgefield CT USA
HP Blackbird Vista Ultimate SP-1

Pierre_Admin

2009/04/20 10:04

Permalink

Each grid (and even each field) can be used as a source for other apps:
  • Use MS Word to mail merge or email merge from a contact list in IQ
  • Use Excel to view (and filter, analyze) a grid content, so co-workers or your boss can view (but not modify) your info
  • Generate fancy reports (and even queries) using MS Access
Other office suite, that is ODBC enabled, could be used as well.
 
I'll add a menu option to automatically generate the ODBC connection for any IQBase
 
There isn't much in the doc for this, but checkout: 9. Example-Finances
 

jan_rifkinson

2009/04/20 10:10

Permalink

so I'm assuming Open Office applies here?
 
--
Jan Rifkinson
Ridgefield CT USA
HP Blackbird Vista Ultimate SP-1

jdonlan

2009/04/20 10:58

Permalink

One other aspect of the ODBC feature is that it is 2-way, you can use ODBC to import information from other databases into IQ - see the Mantis import example. With a little work - thanks Pierre! - you can import from the wide variety of database formats that ODBC supports.
John

>Now that it's open source
 
FYI, Ecco Pro is not open source. It is free. The Ecco community has been trying for the last 12 years to get the source, but never succeeded. Some say that Netmanage made a deal with M$ to kill Ecco. Nobody really knows why this happened to Ecco...