A Message for Senior Management ...
ZOHO Creator Team:
My client had a simple request ...
To be able to view a list of records within a certain date range that is specified at run time ... group them by a another field (defined in Edit Mode) ... and for each Group show the count of records for the group as well as the Sum of another field (also defined at Edit time)
... something mundane as this should be possible without resorting to HTML Views ... but not with ZOHO Creator ... so the workaround was to setup a Stateless Form for the User to specify the Start/End dates ... pass these values as in the url of an HTML View ... and basically replicate what ZOHO Creator's List View code does.
But I wish it was just that simple !!!
When you try this, you run into another problem ...
ZOHO Creator can not correctly translate the string values passed in the url into date fields
... even though my Application's date setting is defined as MM/dd/yy ... ZOHO Creator insists on using its own convoluted logic to determine which part is the day and which is the month ... so when it encounters 04/01/09 (April 1, 2009) it translates it to 01/04/09 (Jan 4, 2009) ... but when 04/23/09 is passed to it, it translates it correctly.
Here is the script in my HTML View ...
RequestedStartDate = input.StartDate.toDate();
RequestedEndDate = input.EndDate.toDate();%>
input.StartDate is <%=StartDate%><br>
input.StartDate.toDate is <%=RequestedStartDate%><br/>
input.EndDate is <%=EndDate%><br/>
input.EndDate.toDate() is <%=RequestedEndDate%>
... see attached image to see the mess it makes of it.
Can (senior) management at ZOHO please answer these questions ...
a) Why does it take so many contortions to perform what is "in the business world" a basic everyday requirement ... the value of a database is not in its ability to accept and store records ... but to be able to slice and dice the records to mine for information ... and mining for records in a date range is Data Mining 101 !!!!
b) Why has this defect with date translation not been fixed as yet ? ... I am sure I read that someone else ran into this wall a while ago ... yet I could not find the post on this forum (thanks to the primitive search facilities of this forum) ... of course I did not find it in this page ... http://zohocreator.wiki.zoho.com/Known-Issues.html ... reserved for listing "Known Issues"
c) In which world does ... making cosmetic changes to the script editor ... or providing new functionality like the IP Address of the User ... take precedence over fundamental flaws like improper date translation ?
If you sense a tone of anger and sarcasm, you are correct ... it is getting increasingly embarassing (not to mention annoying) having to apologize to clients for not being able to deliver basic functionality under a ZOHO Creator platform ... or spending hours on a task that normally takes five minutes on other database platforms.
Recently, one client walked away from an unfinished project because ZOHO Creator could not correcly store the current time in a field and took months to fix this defect. Now, another client is unhappy that ZOHO Creator can not handle a simple date field.
I am increasingly coming to the conclusion that ZOHO Creator is targeted at the SOHO business person who wants to do the very basic list management tasks ... ease of development, R.A.D facilities and complex data manipulations are just items for the famous "road map" (which I have come to believe as sometime before hell freezes over).
I think its time for senior/executive management to step up and articulate their vision of ZOHO Creator ... address the root cause of the users' frustration bubbling under the surface ... and please, no canned responses of sorrow and apology ... just actions and results.
Gaev