One of the features I have seen in movie collection management applications is the ability to generate a report about the database, one of the new features in the 2.30 version of My Movies that is pending is the ability to import movies based on their barcode.
This got me thinking what would a reporting implementation look like and how could these two features be "merged together" to create a report that could be used to create a import based on the resulting report.
Well let’s start with the 1st question, what would a reporting implementation look like? To answer that question we should start with the question of what should the design goals be?
1. It should be simple to implement - It should leverage as much of the existing My Movies infrastructure as possible.
2. It should be extensible - Someone, somewhere will want to do something nutty so a approach that can be extended without needing to change My Movies would be best.
3. The reports that are generated should be simple and easy to understand.
Well since My Movies is already generating XML outputs, I would argue the above requirements are best met through the use of XSLT as the report generation model.
With that in mind I guess a new menu item called "Tools" gets added to the My Movies collection manager, this would have a new menu item called Reports within it, the registered reports would each get a dynamic sub menu item. Selection of a specific report would result in a dialog coming up that displays some status and give the ability to cancel the report generation it will take some time after all.
There should also be a new Configure menu item called "Reports" this would invoke a dialog that lists the installed reports, each report would consist of a friendly name, the XSLT that goes with it and the file extension to associate with the resulting output (normally .HTML).
You would be able to select new reports via a add report button that would bring up a dialog that lets you browse for a XSLT and specify its friendly name.
When the 'Tools\Reports\Report Name' is selected My movies would export the latest XML, and apply the associated XSLT to the XML to generate the report, once applied it would invoke the resulting file (ReportName - Date.extension) via shell execute so that the right viewer for that file would be invoked.
That takes us to what reports would be interesting to have, off the top of my head the following come to mind:
1. Detailed Report - DVD Front Cover /w UPC and basic movie details (running time, mpaa rating, production year, release date, 1-3 actors, sound tracks, subtitles)
2. Simple List - release date, tattle, mpaa rating
With these basic reports folks would be taken care of, but how would you make these reports? Well the simple list is easy enough and even the detailed report is not that hard but how do we get the UPC?
Well RenderX created a XSLT that can take a UPC/EAN and turn it into a barcode, this is the barcode for Babel.
The cool thing is that they made this available for free, so Brian could use this if he wants; with this sort of integration you would be able to re-create your database by using the new Flic Barcode scanner support coming in My Movies 2.30.
My parting words for you today? well XSLT is good for you, just like mom and apple pie.