On Wed, Nov 3, 2010 at 3:20 PM, Tim Harig <user...@ilthio.net> wrote:
> This page didn't make it to through to my nntp server so I appologize if I > miss something that was covered. > > On 2010-11-03, Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfr...@ix.netcom.com> wrote: > > On Tue, 2 Nov 2010 20:32:13 +1000, Dylan Evans <dy...@contentfree.info> > > declaimed the following in gmane.comp.python.general: > > > >> I'm setting up a database for an organisation who want to do mail merges > in > >> office 2010. I know i can use the MySQL ODBC driver for the mail merge > but i > >> have set up the database with lots of relations and many-to-many links > which > >> i'm sure will lead to a huge amount of confusion (I think, i don't > really > >> know much about mail merge). > > Many to many relationships without some kind of intersection table are > considered a rather poor practice in general. Yes an intersection table with a description char field. > > >> What i want to know is, is there anyway to send data from python, which > the > >> UI is written in, to office templates and mail merges? > > > > If a long lived form, I'd probably define a query or view (I think > > MySQL 5.x has output-only views) that isolates just to the data fields > > used in the mail merge. > > I agree that a view would be the best solution if you have the access to do > so; but, a couple of other alternatives come to mind in case you do not. > > That would help alot, it would certainly make it easier for then, i didn't know about views, i will rtfm. > 1. Do the mail merge in Python using a Word template. Then you can add any > kind of logic that you need to the merge. > > Can this be done in pure python? Bearing in mind that the server will be linux > 2. Add some kind of export function to your python UI that allows you to > export the data to an Excel sheet, CSV, or even another ODBC data > source (like another MySQL table or database that you might have > access to). > I have considered this one, ideally the file saving would be skipped, since it's only temporary and i am concerned that users may save many files mixing them up, or try to use old export files which are out of sync with the database. This is a community organisation with volunteers, so i expect technical competency to be low. However if i can send the data directly from python to office somehow i could avoid that issue. What would be perfect is an ODBC driver which connected via XMLRPC or some other simple protocol. Thanks for the help. -- > > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list > -- "The UNIX system has a command, nice ... in order to be nice to the other users. Nobody ever uses it." - Andrew S. Tanenbaum -- "The UNIX system has a command, nice ... in order to be nice to the other users. Nobody ever uses it." - Andrew S. Tanenbaum
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