Testimonials

From: Peter Gill [mailto:p...@mindersoftware.com]
Sent: Sunday, January 22, 2012 9:42 AM
To: Oleg Fomin
Subject: Progress Status Report

Hi Oleg
Happy New Year.

FRB is a brilliant product in doing what it was designed to do. I wish we had 'extracted our fingers' and done something about replacing SV Report Writer (which we use as a forms editor) years ago.

The price of Third Party Clarion-based software tools bares no resemblance to the value of the product to business system providers like us who concentrate on application development. With FRB we also found a minimal investment time in getting it up and running. If I could make a few observations from our experience:

we installed FRB, identified its operational mode and produced a couple of replacement forms in less time than we spent on Right Reports trying to produce something intelligent and failed
our R & D was 14 hours including the spec for FRB's integration so it could co-habit with the current report writer. I could not get 'off-the-ground' in the same time with Rights Reports. We researched Right Reports twice in the last three years resolving that it would cause us time and pain grief. That comment is no reflection on Capesoft but a design methodogy in relation to a product. Perhaps we are different to a lot of developers but there is a huge difference between a forms editor and a report writer. We have clients who use Crystal (which we refuse to support - they expect it to be done for nothing). We have found it simpler to hard-code complex reports some of which I would defy anyone to complete with Crystal. Having said that I do believe that we can use FRB to replace many of our standard reports; I just need time to plan that and how we present it to the end-user. Nothing is ever simple without thought and planning.
By co-existing with the existing report writer it allowed
- phased client conversion at a module level
- sharing all of the existing report writer variables to perform similarly
- utilsing existing menu and report procedures which write runtime filter-data to .ini files
we had a series of questions arise whilst generating replacement forms and found logical answers either on existing forum responses or by lateral thinking.
the only query we had direct to you concerned a printer performance issue which we subsequently resolved to a wirless HP printer (the default) on a backup development machine; it took ages to 'initalise': nothing else
FRB is intuitive in operation
we successfully copy runtime class procedures - with standard embedded code
we sucessfully copy (at the command prompt) report files (.rpt) and simply edit with Topscan the runtime-procedure pointer. In these cases the file structure is identical
complex / tedious form creation is less painful due to: the simplicty of operaton; WYSIWYG; it looks good on the screen; and the output looks better...goof rewards for the 'hack'.
we simply intgrated with our SMTP emailing of standard forms and it works seamlessly. This applies to both one-off or batch runs (statements, invoices, remittance advices etc).
we have many standard forms which clients use for automated procedures (viz one-off or batch emailing of statements). Once customer form production is complete we will convert our standard forms to FRB. Our code-planning for FRB has already allowed for this. This alone represents a significant benefit to us.

Clients (who pay the bills) will see FRB as an enhancement to their business system and our install team will see it as a revenue-raiser converting clients to maintaining their own forms via paid training. So thank you and well done! Please feel free to use me as a new-installation reference site. I think FRB is under-priced but then you operate in a market where the pre-emptive comment is often pre-occupied on price rather than savings and opportunity. I think history will prove - as RW 8 does - that SV failed to distinguish between report writing and forms editing; you have not. I have been doing what I do with accounting-based business systems since 1965 and plan to work until I am 130! I say this with known confidence in the preservative qualities of Australian Shiraz! The most important thing to our business is our suppliers and an acceptable return to them on their product. I may have a couple of things which we need and state here that I am quiet happy to contribute even if simple development. We also operate in Vietnam and they have some 'firing-squad' rules and regulations re formatting. I will put together some notes when we complete the first round of FRB installs.
Regards
Peter

I would just like to thank Oleg for making the ODBC storage add-on to Fomin. I have owned Fomin for quite some time without making use of it, but with the introduction of ODBC storage the multi user consideration is a no topic. I am using the Report Builder with MSSQL and the storage add-on works absolutely flawless. My users are totally satisfied. Not that they really edit the reports that much, but when I am on site, I can make the changes immediately and they are available for all users the second I press save. Still, the old format works. I can make my reports locally, export and send my users a single reportfile which they can easily import into their system, or vice versa. This add-on has made me finally design reports in Fomin, which also turns out to be rather simple. It has functionality that I have missed in Clarion since I started (like Report Header and Footer). I have always tried to postpone designing reports, but the fast and easy design in Fomin makes the task worth the little effort I put into it, sometimes I even feel I think it is fun. Very ackward feeling when you get used to dislike something.

A perfect report solution.

Bjarne Havnen
AdiTech as
Product Manager Clarion
www.aditech.no

Endorsement on FRB v.3.0 with "ODBC Report Storage" release

It has been an honour to work with Oleg Fomin in the development and testing of this major upgrade to FRB Reports which he agreed to develop upon our request. All of our reports and embedded graphics are stored centrally on our MSSQL server. Since going live with our application in mid-August, we have entered well over 10,000 jobs into our production system. When a job is completed, a delivery docket and an address label report are always printed. Since migrating these reports to FRB Enterprise Reports everything is working perfectly and my users love the accuracy in the report printing that was a problem with standard Clarion hard coded reports. The report body no never overwrites the footer! If a minor report change is required, I can walk up to any terminal, fix the report and know that the enhancement is instantly available to all users at our four branch sites situated up to 100 km from our central production hub. FRB Enterprise Reports has been an integral part of our daily operations since deployment of our application. The nicely formatted accurate reports that can be tweaked in moments is one of the key components that has enabled us to monitor our production processes so closely, that we have had no late jobs since deployment. Furthermore, every one of our complex requirements has been incorporated into the design of this product including the ability to save the printer settings for each report centrally on the server on a per user or per work station basis. This was a requirement because the enterprise wide Windows Standard Operating Environment deployed to the 7,000 users on our network prevented these from being saved on the local machines. Just yesterday, I had an enquiry from a customer and within five minutes, I had written a custom report that allowed me to provide the information required to solve her problem.

The service received from Oleg Fomin has been outstanding and on those few occasions that a bug has been identified, an update has been available within 24 hours. It is without hesitation that I recommend this comprehensive solution to business reporting to all in the Clarion community.

Rod Webster
Manager, Document Production Services
Open Learning Institute
Queensland, Australia

Question:
We're using List and Label right now and I'm thinking of going to Fomin.
Have you tried the two and if so, do you like Fomin more? Why?

Answer:
I did a bunch of Reports with List-and-labels, using Clarion and Delphi. LL is very good, but the report designer is a little tuff for our clients. They struggle to design reports, but LL is powerful. Simon's support is very good, and he phoned me a few time from England to South Africa to sort out problems, when email take to long. Speed is a Little slow on Big reports, and we had sometimes GPF's when we call LL from our Clarion APP. (That were with LL version 9) I don't know the newer versions. If you design reports and not you customer, LL is an Option to go.

Recently, about 3 months ago, I went over to Fomin. What a great package. Easy to use, and a very easy interface for our customer to design reports. Easy to implement into Clarion, and Oleg support is great. Currently all my reports filtering, preview, etc can be configured runtime, and that's really amazing. I use Fomin with ITPreviewer, cool combination. I don't think I will use another report designer for clarion, only Fomin.

Danie de Beer [cwrepliesdb @ designersoftware . co . za]

05/26/2004

I'm not a super experienced programmer, but I have been using Clarion since CPD 2.1 days and love it. When I discovered the Fomin Report Builder it made my life so much simpler. What a great product. I used to "hardwire" all my reports but users were always asking for more customization. Now I can supply it with FRB. And, since most users just want to change the header info (add a logo, change font style, etc.) it's simple to instruct them on how to do it.

As for support, it is among the best. Oleg is patient (a lot of my problems were due to my own stupid mistakes) and prompt (I usually got an answer within hours). In the Clarion 3rd party community the shining stars in user support are Oleg Fomin, Larry Teames (CPCS), Mike McLoughlin (Sterling Data), Bruce Johnson (Capesoft) and Alexander Ivanovsky (Sealsoft). Thanks Oleg for a great product.

Boyd Norton
www.nscspro.com
www.agpix.com/boydnorton
www.evergreenphotoalliance.com

----- Original Message -----
From: Bill Rollins <brollins@tcsoft.com>
Newsgroups: TopSpeed.Topic.Third_Party
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2002 4:19 AM
Subject: Fomin Report Builder

All, I just purchased Formin Report Builder. I have to say, this is one of the best 3rd party products I've seen. I asked Oleg to add Mail Merge to it before I purchased. He had it done in just a couple of days. I created my first trial app in about 20 minutes. If you don't own it, you and your users are missing out.

Great Product!
Thanks, Oleg.

Bill Rollins

Fomin Report Builder (FRB) has been an invaluable addition to my programming arsenal. I develop applications for the United States Air Force; time is a luxury that many times is not afforded to me in meeting tight deadlines or mission requirements. The most complicated and time consuming development phase is reports generation - it seems that no matter how well you tweak a report for a customer, the desire to "see" information in a slightly different manner only increases once customers become acquainted with a completed application. For the first time I can empower my customer base with a reporting tool that not only affords them the proper tool for the job, but does so in a straightforward manner.

I evaluated all of the Clarion For Windows 3rd party printing tools before settling on FRB, using a wide range of realworld applications and varied end-user skill levels. FRB's use of the word processor paradigm quickly enabled personnel with very little computing knowledge to create reports that benefited their workcenter. The turnaround time between report modification and generation is so slight that users become "addicted" to tweaking their output - the days of contacting me to change a report header or adding a new field (or font style) are FINALLY over! I've found that I can create a handful of sample reports for the installation file; end-users open them in FRB and see how simple it is to create quality reports. My workload is easily halved by shifting the reports creation phase from my desk to theirs!

I strongly urge all Clarion For Windows application developers to evaluate FRB for their reporting needs. The product is mature and stable; feature-laden; handles every possible reporting situation, and will greatly reduce your workload (translation: more time for creating new software). And did I mention the excellent technical support?

Scott Daughtry
sdaughtry@yahoo.com
http://www.sdaughtry.com

Hi Fomin,

Thanks for your reply. I like your reporter. I purchased the List and Label and other reporters but found that basically end-users do have a problem in using them. With yours, they feel comfortable.

Kelvin Chua
SINGAPORE

I'm using FRB and find it SUPER!

The code generated has many useful embed point (BEFORE/AFTER: Edit, Change, Close, Print, Insert, Print Dialog, Process Data, Print Report Detail, Print Preview, Open View, Next View, Close View, etc, etc, etc.) where to put Clarion statement.You can bind your USER FUNCTIONS (and variables too) easily using the template, and use them in the report. (IE: complex formulas, complex lookuptables, global parameters, etc) I use a function called "ExportField", to export to a text file all the variables in the detail band and get a file with the same data as the report in only one process; after that I can import the file in Excel, build graphics and print it, or use the data exported as input in other process.

It's a fact that your clients ask for many different reports, so you only have to build the file schematics, compile your application and then become into an user and build the reports asked. If some time later, the client ask for new reports, you just have to build or modify an exited report and e-mail them to him (very convenient if you live far from him).

The Report formater is very easy to use and allow you create a great variety of nice reports (see the demo).You can include PICTURES in your reports. I translated the FRB.INI file to Spanish and my clients get a friendly Spanish interface.

You can export the report to MS-Word!! and many other features.

I hope I've help you (and sorry for my English, it's not so good).
Regards.
--
Lic. Pablo A. Montini
Magna Computacion
Mar del Plata - Argentina

I use Fomin Report as an extension to a standard software-package that i sell and the customers are satisfied with the results (so am i !). With Fomin Report you can decide what reports and files/fields the customer is able to use and deliver pre-formatted reports as examples.

Just translate the help-file to meet your own standards and there you go!

In the past i sold the Topspeed Report Writer to customers, but i think it's too complicated for an ordinary user. Besides that, there's no flexibility in the protection of certain files or fields (except that you exclude them from the dictionary)

After a while all kinds of customers were asking for a report-writer. So i investigated what report-writers were available in the market and especially written for Clarion.. I tested FRB and decided that this is the pakage i believed in. It looks like Topspeed RPW, bu is more user-friendly and easier to implement and train.

Because it's written in Clarion, it will be available in future versions of Clarion as well...

A nice feature is that you can itegrate FRB in your programs (unlike standalone report-writers with there own interface etc..). The customer sees it as an integrated part of your software. You can translate every text and/or controls, so it's up to your imagination
to implement this package.

The time i spent to learn the FRB templates and use it in my programs was about 1 day (i used to work with Topspeed RPW, so that helps). After that, implementation was a simple "click and go".

Greetings,
Bram Klootwijk
Datatrieve Software B.V.
The Netherlands

I am using FRB and I would like to use FRB in my work, because it's very comfortable for end users, which are not programmers, to make necessary report in run time. If database has many levels of parent-child relations, it may be unknown beforehand, what filds of what tables the end report have to contain. FRB gives to end users opportunities to place any field in any place of report in run time. It is very convenient for developers too, since they can spend less time to support thier programms.

Shapovalov Mishael, Russia

The product is easy to use, stable and solves a great problem (customized internal reports different for any of our customers) for us, because now we build one example report for each type of report and the enduser has the possibility to make as many variations as he need with a friendly, license-free tool. We like it.

Greetings from Germany,

G?nter Siegismund

Hi oleg!

I just want to say hi and tell you to Keep UP the good work!!!

Thank God for people like you.

LI.Victor Hugo Martinez