Importing and Exporting Data in PowerApps - database

I am looking to build a simple, one page app that does the following (the users who would be utilizing this tool would need this to involve zero code, and as little "clicks" as possible):
a worker who has taken samples could import data (in an excel format) to a database, ideally a SQL server.
after import is complete, the user could use drop downs and filters to set parameters for what report they want to see.
with the "export data button," the user could then export a report to an excel file for their download and use.
I am not very familiar with PowerApps - by the looks of it, this seems like something that can be done, but I don't want to waste time if this is not worth the effort and won't have the functionality I am looking for. If this IS impossible, any suggestions on where I could build out something like this?

Related

View Application Background Tasks

I have an .net application fully built up for commercial purpose. The application utilizes SQL Server DB to store all the information. If you like specifics of the application, it is a Forex trading application where it stores all the price ranges changes during the day. So all the data is stored in the SQL Server.
Now what I would like to know is how can I know where is the application DB is location and where it is pointing to.
Also application has this feature where we can export the tables that I am viewing to excel file, the way it creates excel files is really "beautiful", would like to know what are the VBA commands that it is utilizing. I suspect this might be a batch file that is being run when we trigger the export option.
The reason I am wanting to know this is,
I want to make this automated, as in everyday at 0600 I would like the export to be automatic and the exported file will have todays date... I can do all the later mentioned tasks, the thing I am having problem is knowing where is the db and the VBA commands.
If my memory serves me right, there was this program that gives u insight in to everything that your computer does.

Merging ACCESS projects (transferring a switchboard)

I am enhancing and fixing the forms/queries/VBcode etc. for an access 2007 database. The current version is being actively used and when I am done with my changes I need to transfer in my changes without disrupting the data stored in the tables already in the running mdb.
I'm not entirely sure how to handle the "merge" when the time comes. As an experiment I have a local backup copy of the version I started working on and used the import external Access data option. This imported the new forms, queries, vb, etc. But the only hang up is that the switchboard form isn't the new. Switchboard forms of course are guided by the switchboard manager but I was hoping that all that logic is held inside the form itself somehow. It seems this is not the case. After the import there is a new form of the same name with a number after it as expected, and the correct create/modify date. But when open it looks exactly the same as the old switchboard.
Any ideas?
It sounds to me as if you have both the data and the forms etc in the one database. This is not a good idea at all and if you are updating, it is the ideal time to correct the problem. If you split the database, any updates to forms and code can be simply copied to the user without worrying about the data. You will find some notes here: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/access-help/split-an-access-database-HA010342026.aspx
The Access switchboard manager uses a table named Switchboard Items to dynamically populate switchboard form pages. You will need to transfer the updated version of that table to make your revised switchboard pages available in the other project.

How do I elegantly import an Excel file into Sql Server via a Coldfusion HTML form?

Does anyone have an elegant suggestion for how to get the contents of an Excel spreadsheet into SQL Server via a web form? I need to allow our clients to upload modest amounts of structured data, and I need that data to ultimately reside in a sql table. I really can't expect the clientele to produce anything but an Excel file, but I could require that it be an xlsx.
The web app is written in Coldfusion; it doesn't need to be able to handle huge numbers of simultaneous requests, but I don't want to consider some sort of server-side batch job processing or shunt the user to an asp.net page (which is what we are doing now).
Any recommendations (or examples of how others are successfully doing this) would be appreciated. Due to the sensitivity of the data, we really can't do anything to compromise the security of the web or sql servers.
If you are using CF9, then you could easily use the cfspreadsheet tag too. I mention this one specifically because Shawn's link did not (presumably due to its being relatively new on the CF scene). Here's the livedoc link: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/ColdFusion/9.0/CFMLRef/WSc3ff6d0ea77859461172e0811cbec17cba-7f87.html
For full use, I would create a web form with a standard file upload field. On the backend handling the form submission, get a copy of the file with
<cffile action="upload" destination="uploaded.xls".....>
Then use:
<cfspreadsheet action="read" query="myExcelData" src="uploaded.xls" ...>
At which point, your spreadsheet content will be available as a query object. You can then loop over this query, running insert queries into your sql server each time you loop. That should do it.
Here are the most notable options to help point you in the right direction; choose what you are most comfortable with (Source: Charlie Arehart).
CFXL
JXLS
CFX_Excel
My personal recommendation is to go the CFX_Excel route. Although a commercial product, it will grant you the most functionality/flexibility of the options listed.

How to configure an Export Option in Reporting Services for Text export with no separators?

There's the need to send data to an external interface - a financial statutory report to be sent periodically for some country's government which expects data as text files with no separator between fields: fixed width, left-padded with zeros or blank spaces (depending on data type) to fill the space.
So we created an RDL with the required fields and were looking at adding an export option in for this.
Can an export option be created to export in this format?
We'd like to avoid having to CAST all appropriate fields to NVARCHAR in the stored procedure that feeds the report, left-pad them there and finally concatenate everything - unless that's the only option to accomplish it.
Also, we definitely don't want to code an ad-hoc export method in .NET, there won't be much reports with this exporting option so it's not worth it. Besides it's not so easy to convince the server team to deploy DLLs to servers - if there's something already coded, open source or shareware, we could have a look onto it though wouldn't be the preferred solution.
Previously we had been able to configure the XML configuration file for Reporting Services 2008 to add a new export option for export to Text with fields separated by pipes, so were thinking to try this first. Unfortunately discovered if you use the Text or CSV export motors but specify no separator, comma is used by default.
Any ideas?
In my opinion, Reporting Services isn't the right tool for this job. You're trying to bend a reporting tool into a data migration tool. While on the surface I guess it looks similar - outputing formatted data - the structure of the fixed length text file isn't really what Reporting Services is good at producing out of the box. We do a similar fixed length export using a scheduled SQL Server Agent job. You could also write a console app and run it manually or use Windows Scheduled Tasks to run it.
If you're determined to use Reporting Services for some functionality reason (for example, the export has to use the same parameters to filter the data as the report that is being viewed) then I'd simply create a second report based on the first with no header or footer, just a detail section with a table containing one wide field with an expression in it that creates the formatted text you need for your export. Put a link in the header of the main report called "Create export file" that links to this new report and passes the parameters across then export it to some non-paginating format like CSV.
Otherwise, you're looking at creating a custom renderer which you don't want to do and I agree is overkill for this.

Exporting MS-Access form results to Excel?

I'm kind of new to Access. I've got some experience working with integrating MySQL and Oracle with PHP to create web-based database search engines, but I am having difficulty understanding certain concepts with Access.
I've got a small database with around 200 entries with 20 fields each. I've written a form to search it by using VBA to run an SQL query against the database and displays the results in datasheet mode to a different form (is this the standard way of doing this, or is there a better way?)
I want to be able to add a button to export those results to excel (or csv or tab or whatever, it doesn't really matter). However, I'm not sure how to do this with the form results. Its easy with an entire database, but I can't find documentation on how to do this. Is there a way to do this? Or am I doing this wrong?
If at all required, I can provide more details.
You said "I've written a form to search it by using VBA to run an SQL query against the database and displays the results in datasheet mode to a different form".
If you mean an actual form in datasheet view, you can export that form's data to Excel with the DoCmd.OutputTo method.
DoCmd.OutputTo acOutputForm, "frmResults", acFormatXLS, _
"C:\SomeFolder\ExportedResults.xls"
However, if you're opening a query in datasheet view, rather than an actual form, you can export the query's result set.
DoCmd.OutputTo acOutputQuery, "qryResults", acFormatXLS, _
"C:\SomeFolder\ExportedResults.xls"
You can choose a different OutputFormat instead of Excel if you wish. Look at Access' Help topic for the OutputTo method to see the available choices.

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