Layout Script Tab and BQuery Macros

While exploring BOARD, I turned on the Show layout script tab feature to see what that's all about. This is under Board...Board Options.

After enabling the feature, I noticed the BQuery tab show up on each of my layouts.

Exploring more, I found the articles on BOARD Excel Add-in Functions and VBA Integrations.pdf and BOARD Excel Add-in Functions and VBA Integrations - Excel examples It sounds like this script tab can be used on conjunction with the Microsoft Office Add-ins to build macros with more interesting behaviors.

This leads me to the discussion questions. Has anyone leveraged the scripting capability in BOARD, along with the Office Add-ins to build something they want to share? As BOARD transitions to the web, should this functionality be kept or deprecated?

In my humble opinion, this feature is client-specific and macro-based scripts should be deprecated. This avoids possible upgrade issues where macros break on certain software versions. Macros can also be security concerns. Macros are run on the client-side rather than the server. I can certainly make an argument for why they are still valuable, but my opinion is they should be deprecated in favor of a server-side processing options, of which BOARD has many. I welcome all your viewpoints and thank you for sharing your perspectives.

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Björn Reuber

Hi,

I haven't got an example to share, but two use cases for BQuery. You need this, if you are using BOARD Webservice function (here you have to create an BQuery request. Furthermore you can use it to merge different Layouts (or to copy only a certain part of an complex layout to a different one). But for this scenario you must be carfully cause of the Algorithms (linked to the Blocks, which needed to be updated).

Regards

Björn

unknown

Ah, that helps. I thought it was more for macros, but now I understand it’s more for using the web service.

Thanks Björn Reuber

Paul Wyatt

I agree with you Bob Gill, the script should be deprecated as it serves no useful function at present that I can see. I did start to use it as a quick summary of my layouts but that was as far I could go with it. I also attempted to dynamically write and alter scripts and found that a pasted script would pull in some information to a dataview but, crucially, vital info was dropped too. On that basis, I think the bquery is a distraction to developers and should be switched off until it has an actual use.

Etienne CAUSSE

Same as Paul Wyatt - Avison Young UK, sometimes it's useful to check all your blocks parameters at once, but otherwise I did not find any proper use case. Although being able to copy part of a layout to a different layout could be useful sometimes (when you always call the same long series of cubes).

Fethi ZERARA

Hi there!,

i enabled this option but i'm getting an error every time when i apply the BQuery , Is that normal?

Here you can find a Screen of what 'im getting !

Thank you!