InfoQube IM - Community

Submitted by JohnR on 2009/08/03 20:39

Okay this is not the brightest thing to do but... . I have been using Ecco for over a dozen years so am very comfortable in using it and my .eco file contains just about everything I know in life. So if I am going to migrate to a new product it will need to be, at least for a time, as close to Ecco as possible. Besides going through the exercise should be a good learning experience.

So I have a week's vacation in front of me and thought I would give the "Make InfoQube Look Like Ecco"-exercise a shot. Any thoughts or suggestions of forum threads to start at?

I have used the conversion routine and that has done something if only to generate a file 10x the size of the .eco. I guess my first question is what is going on here? How can any database structure have so much overhead as to expand a file that much? Maybe storage space is not that much of an issue today but the the processing overhead has got to be a penalty.
About the only recognizable data I could find is in the Address Book. The problem I am facing there is Ecco recognized (and so does Outlook) that a typical address has too much information to display across a row. Is there any way to create a structure that looks more like the Ecco Address Book?
I am not sure how to think in terms of the InfoQube database structure. Is it a relational database? If so what is its schema?
One concern I have is that Ecco is essentially a hierarchical database so I create rows in folders and drop folders into notepads. I do not see this hierarchical structure in InfoQube. For example how does one group items into the equivalent of folders and then make a folder visible by placing it (and several others) in a a grid?
While the Ecco Calendar tab is very structured it is also very powerful in use. Hey, it's a Day Timers page and Day Timers has worked for generations! Being able to have Ticklers schedule day by day from items in other folders is a whole way of working. Is it possible to create the look and function of the Ecco Calendar tab in InfoQube?
I have many Appointment entries in the Ecco Calendar tab. After converting the .eco in InfoQube I cannot see the appointments in the Appointment grid. Should they appear here or does something have to be done?

For any advise: thank you very much. I sense there is much to be done to get a familiar usable environment after a .eco file conversion. If I can make any progress I would gladly contribute How to - procedures to the forum.

John

Comments

Hello John & welcome to the forum.

It's been too many years since I moved away from Ecco Pro to be of much help to you in the way you posed your basic question but I can tell you that, for kicks, I imported my old .eco file (principally my address book) into IQ w/o an issue. Having said that, it took me a while to learn what I needed to do to create a grid so that all that info was usable to me. I'm happy to report that it was all there when I finally figured it out.

As an Ecco user, almost everything you had in Ecco is available in InfoQube. I would say the biggest gap is the calendar. Altho IQ has a calendar (that works) it is not as fully integrated yet as the one you had in Ecco. However, it will be as Pierre knows this is a priority for many of us. Nevertheless, you can create appts in the graphic calendar, along w reminders & recurrences. That info is translated to the grid but only from the calendar > grid, not the other way around as yet.

Being as how you are used to Ecco, then you are familiar w hierarchies, i.e. outlines & cells, i.e. grids. This is basically no different in InfoQube. The key here is the source & the filters:

If the source = everything, i.e. all data, the grid will contain all the data in the dB

you can then filter & sort at will

If the source = field appointment, IQ will limit the grid data to appointments only

you can then filter w date filters & sort at will

So on & so forth.

Personally, I hate it when someone's first suggestion is to read the manual but here I would suggest that you browse through it if you haven't already. Go to URL www.sqlnotes.net/drupal5/index.php. The manual is a work in progress, much of it being done by forum members which is good IMO since, by definition, it will be written from a user's POV. Presumably it will be friendlier & less techie as so many manuals are.

So I would suggest you start there, then come back here w a specific question about one type of data that you interested in organizing first, i.e. tasks or address book or appts & some one will definitely help you out. This is a very friendly forum w helpful & patient users.

Hope you find this post helpful for starters.

Jan Rifkinson

Ridgefield CT USA

HP Blackbird Vista Ultimate SP-2

Welcome John and thanks Jan for providing your excellent feedback (thanks too for the post in outlinersoftware.com)

I'll try to answer the specific issues:

A Tools>>Database>>Compact should bring this to roughly 2x the size of the original Ecco pro file size. This is reasonable considering the Ecco file format limitations.
All your Ecco folders have been imported, but Ecco does not provide a method to import Notepads. To view the content of a folder (in Ecco you drop it to a notepad), you can create a new grid and select the folder from the drop down list, or double click on it from the Properties Pane. The Properties pane is like the Ecco's Folder view (but IMO, more powerful)
As far as users are concerned, the database structure is identical to Ecco's. Checkout Demystifying InfoQube
Ecco is not a hierarchical database. Visually you could arrange the folders in a hierarchy, but except for folder columns, it is strickly a visual thing and there is no inheritance
The IQ calendar needs much work. The Outlook-style is somewhat functional (as Jan described) and an Ecco-like (i.e. grid-like) is planned.
You can open the Appointments field to view your appointments. These will be visible in the Outlook-like calendar when that part is completed.

IQ is Ecco-like, but IQ was not designed to be an Ecco clone. If many aspects are similar (items, sub-items, views, columns, values, forms, filters). There are some aspects which are different (multiple parents, recursion, equations (push and pull types), inheritance, HTML pane, live-search, multi-column sorting that stick, etc). Finally, some aspects will be more Ecco-like when completed.

I hope this helps !

Thanks to both of you. I will get down to work on this in a couple of days.