I have a customer very much into DFD QBE. Now they are moved into DE8. Wondering whether some of the following can be done in DE8:

Create a QBM with grouping and group totals, then export everything on the screen into Excel?

I know we can do this via DQL. But, users like some simple way of creating a report and exporting it.

I guess here the word is simple...

Exporting from one tool to another is normally not simple as you are basically exporting apples and importing pears.

In 7.x there was implemented something called Excel Export which should "magically" export an advanced DataEase form/report directly into Excel, but the only problem is that one export part data and part document so it never really worked. It was a "freebe" as part of the PDF export feature so maybe not enough work was put into it, but it is not a simple problem to solve.

The problem with this solution was that it was based around the graphical representation of the QBM and not the logic so it exported the content of the screen controls, their position and layout but not the underlying logic.

If this approach was ever to work, DataEase would have to produce a proper Excel Spreadsheet with the data in correct columns and derivation for sum/count etc.

DataEase is built up as a "printing press" where data is listed an aggregated in a mono directional. What is produced by the Query is a Multi-View that contain all the rows and columns of the query, but the aggregation is done in the GUI.

The export engine will only export non-aggregated data, so sums etc done in the QBM will not be exported. The Export will however be sorted according to the grouping but in real life it would make more sense to user Order than Group as Grouping is a visual tool rather than a good tool for sorting data.

As an afterthought we can ask why people would want to export the entire layout of a QBM to excel. Exporting a data set for further manipulation in Excel is an obvious approach, but why include the grouping and the sums?

Obviously the answer must be that the current reporting features in DE8 fall short of expectations and one want a larger freedom with the data so should this be sorted by working on a more streamlined export to Excel or on a more streamlined Reporting Tool that negates the need to export structured data to Excel?