MicroStation's Reports interface is a closed UI. That is, we can manipulate the UI to create a report definition, but that definition remains obscure. It's stored internally in a DGN file.
It would be great to have a formal report definition language analogous to SQL or XQuery. That way, a Report definition could be documented, archived and shared.
yes we should have sql ability and a really nice interface for it similar to MapInfo has and include the syntax verifier assistance MapInfo has.. to pre test the sql it has correct syntax
This idea was posted several years ago (the date shown is the date when the Ideas Forum was updated and forgot the dates of original posts).
More recent questions posted to the MicroStation Forum further convince me that a query language would offer a better product than the current ad hoc UI.
Jan Šlegr over 1 year ago
I think ECSQL can be the solution here. Unfortunately (at least as far as I know) it can be generated from ECQuery only (a kind of read-only mode), but I do know how to write ECSQL and ask a parser to evaluate it and to create ECQuery from the string.
Regards,
Jan