Publishers

MacSQL can cut the time spent on production to a fraction of what it once was!

MacSQL's scripting support allows you to completely automate your production process - for the first time, your graphic design department can work directly with centralized databases to create and design materials - no more retyping of data or transfering from a PC!

How publishers can benefit:

• Retreive catalog data from your corporate database and place into Quark XPress® already styled!
• Reduce time spent laying out catalogs and directory listings from weeks to just hours.

A Real World Example

A new dot-com spent weeks building an online database of links to other websites. As soon as it ws completed, production began on a book that would mirror the online listing. The graphic designers responsible said it would take weeks to manually lay out all that data in QuarkXPress®. Unfortunately, the book needed to be at the printer in a few days. That's where MacSQL saved the day. While a designer started creating the basic document and style sheets, a co-worker versed in AppleScript created a script to pull the listings out of the database using MacSQL and insert them into the Quark document with the proper XPress Tags. A few hours later, a 200+ page book was ready for a copy editor to look over.

Developers

Need database access in a flash? MacSQL will give you the access you need without having to use a command line.

Whether you are a custom software developer, an ISV, or a hobbiest programmer, MacSQL is your gateway to using SQL databases from your Macintosh.

How developers can benefit:

• Stop using telnet or Virtual PC to access your databases.
• Backup/restore your database.
• Easily clean up data by exporting, massaging in your favorite text editor, and then re-importing.

A Real World Example

A large catalog retailer had production descriptions entered into their database in the Windows character set, but needed the data to be in ASCII format. Their data entry software was rewritten to properly convert new entries, but they needed a solution for existing data.

MacSQL and BBEdit solved the problem in minutes. The field in question and the primary key were exported via MacSQL into a tab-delimited file. The file was opened in BBEdit and a number of regular expressions were used to convert the text into the correct format. One final regular expression was used to turn the tab-delimited file into an SQL command file to update each row with its corrected description. MacSQL then imported the SQL command file and the problem was solved.

Web Authors

Tired of waiting for (and paying) programmers to let you know what is happening with your website databases? Wait no longer.

MacSQL provides an easy interface for non-programmers to view their databases.

How web authors can benefit:

• Export form submission data to Excel&rep; or in CSV or tab-delimited format for use in a mail merge.
• Use an AppleScript to generate repetitive pages (such as product descriptions) from a single template.
• Easily insert or remove test data.

A Real World Example

The PAM® Cooking Spray website contains a database of over 70 recipes. Querying the database with a cgi script everytime a user wanted to view a recipe was a waste of resources.

To increase efficiency, the designers of the PAM® website used MacSQL to import the data, previously in FileMaker Pro®, into a MySQL database. Then an AppleScript was written to generate a static HTML page for every recipe from a single template. Now a change in one place can propigate to every recipe page with the double-click of a single script.