Re: Some advice required [OT]

[Laurent <lutgenl@icloud.com>]

On Tuesday, 28 December 2021 at 03:10:54 UTC+1, Randy Brukardt wrote:
> "Laurent" <lut...@icloud.com> wrote in message 
> news:49538254-21ed-4fd0...@googlegroups.com...
> On Monday, 27 December 2021 at 12:16:27 UTC+1, Niklas Holsti wrote:
> ...
> >> Also, if you do not intend to implement the solution in Ada, this is not 
> >> the right group to discuss it. 
> 
> >I would very much prefer to solve it in Ada but at work I am stuck with 
> >Excel 
> >and VBA which is better than doing it manually. After a few hours starring 
> >at 
> >a screen with thousand of rows of results... If I get an Ada solution I can 
> >adapt it. Just limited to no access/pointers in VBA which shouldn't be 
> >required?
> Hybrid Ada-spreadsheet solutions are possible. It's quite easy to read/write 
> .csv files in Ada, and those can be easily imported/exported from any 
> spreadsheet program (I've been using Libreoffice Calc, but Excel is 
> similar). 
> 
> For an example, the ACATS grading tools essentially work by expecting the 
> vendor (or a third party) to provide a tool that converts compilation 
> results into a .csv file. The .csv file(s) are then read by the grading tool 
> and compared to required results to provide a grade. But it also can be read 
> into a spreadsheet for sanity checking as well as additional analysis. 
> 
> Similarly (and probably more useful to you), I've used spreadsheet data for 
> various traffic in AdaIC (retrieved from Google) as input to Ada programs 
> that analyze the data to provide information that Google is unable to (in 
> particular, usage of the various Ada standards, which are split up into 
> usage of several hundred separate files). I then take the results of the Ada 
> program (which is also a .csv file), open that, and paste the results into a 
> previously created spreadsheet that generates charts for showing to 
> management. (Even highly skilled programmers don't like looking through 
> columns of numbers for trends. :-) 
> 
> But you do have to be able to describe the results that you are looking for. 
> Having read the entire thread, I'm more confused than I started. :-) I 
> suspect when you can describe your problem algorithmically, the solution 
> will be obvious. Good luck finding a solution. 
> 
> Randy.

The problem is not that I don't want to use Ada. We are using Citrix so I am stuck with the programs
the IT departments allows me to use. Was already a chore to get MS Access made available.

I could send all the data home but then I have to be very careful to not have some patient
information somewhere floating around.  Otherwise finding a solution to automate
this will be the least of my problems.

Thanks for the motivation