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UR for $19
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Posted by jimspoon
Nov 8, 2007 at 05:46 PM
http://www.bitsdujour.com/index.aspx?page=index.aspx%3freview%3d177
What do you think of this deal? Should I jump on it?
I’m an Ecco guy myself but always on the lookout for something better.
Posted by Ken Ashworth
Nov 8, 2007 at 07:21 PM
Can’t beat the price, opt for the Pro version mentioned lower on the page.
Which is offering a 62% discount for both the Standard ($49 discounted to $19) and Professional ($99 discounted to $38 - ???, doesn’t specify) versions.
Posted by jimspoon
Nov 8, 2007 at 09:27 PM
Just looking at the comparison between UR Standard and Professional, I see that Professional supports custom attributes and custom forms but Standard does not. That seems pretty essential ... it seems that any PIM worth paying for should allow you to define your data types and data fields.
Even with attributes, many PIMs seem to be functionally similar to a flat-file database. Ideally I’d like to see support for databases with multiple tables referencing each other - allowing for many-to-one data relationships etc. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen that in a PIM program.
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Nov 9, 2007 at 12:52 PM
Hi Jim,
jimspoon wrote:
>Ideally I’d like to see support for
>databases with multiple tables referencing each other - allowing for many-to-one
>data relationships etc. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen that in a PIM program.
IMHO, your best bet in this direction is SQL Notes, which I am currently assessing. It has been discussed in this forum with its developer. It’s very flexible, providing access to its SQL infrastructure from external programs, but also offering an interesting interface apparently influenced by Ecco Pro. I’ve never been an avid Ecco user myself so I can’t really tell.
>Even with attributes, many PIMs seem to be
>functionally similar to a flat-file database.
That is not stricty true. I think infrastructure-wise, there are two popular approaches:
(a) Some kind of serial file format, ranging from evolved TXT/RTF to XML. This is often found in one or two pane outliners, though it’s becoming more and more rare. Examples include Brainstorm, Treepad (at least the Lite version), Freemind, the now dyfunct Hyperclip etc. In such cases, the hierarchical relationship of the PIM information items is more or less embedded in the file structure.
(b) A relational database, to which the main program acts as an interface. This is the case in a very broad spectrum of products, ranging from Outlook to UltraRecall and from Clipmate to on-line CMS software such as WordPress.
The ‘problem’ in the second case is that the tables in the database are more or less fixed as are the relationships among them. For a programmer that might be a limitation, but for most users it’s not. Personally, I wouldn’t want to fiddle with Outlook’s object model! (see http://www.outlookcode.com/article.aspx?ID=37 ).
Cheers
alx
Posted by Pierre Paul Landry
Nov 9, 2007 at 08:45 PM
jimspoon wrote:
>Ideally I’d like to see support for
>databases with multiple tables referencing each other - allowing for many-to-one
>data relationships etc. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen that in a PIM program.
Alexander Deliyannis wrote:
>IMHO, your best bet in this direction is SQL Notes, which I am currently assessing. It has been discussed in this forum with its developer. It’s very flexible, providing access to its SQL infrastructure from external programs, but also offering an interesting interface apparently influenced by Ecco Pro. I’ve never been an avid Ecco user myself so I can’t really tell.
I’ll agree with Alexander. SQLNotes, which I develop, can already handle relational data. You can organize the outline to show Sales > Sales details and many other typical relational data. So much so that you can even use MS Access to generate a report as it the data came from relational data within Access!
But there is more coming. Very soon you will be able to:
1- have level-specific filters (to see just sales on first level, just sale details on level 2, etc)
2- have the relationship enforced by the SQLNotes UI and data engine (as Alexander pointed out, an API and an ActiveX is in development to allow dev. of custom apps using the SQLNotes data engine)
That combined with the already implemented on-the-fly field creation/modification, row and column calculations, and user-defined code will provide interesting avenues for consultants offering turn-key solutions to information management in enterprises.