A Tale of Two ToolsFor the purpose of querying your DVD Profiler collection when the internal filters in DVD Profiler are not enough, there are two different tools that you can use. I will try to compare them as objectively as I can, but having developed ProfilerQuery (hereafter referred to as PQ), I am of course somewhat biased, and I obviously know my own program better than I know Database Query (hereafter referred to as DbQ). PQ was inspired by DbQ, so I tip my hat to
Mark Harrison for the great job that he has done.
Different approachesThe most obvious difference between DbQ and PQ is perhaps that DbQ is a plugin and PQ is a freestanding tool. There are pros and cons to both techniques.
Beyond that, there is another important difference. DbQ is context aware, whereas PQ is generic. What this means is that DbQ handles processing and displaying of result differently depending on what field you are looking at. PQ handles everything the same way, the only difference in handling is due to the data type of the field in question (string, numeric, date or boolean).
Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages. PQ’s ability to freely mix selection criteria rather excludes the possibility of making it context aware. You can’t really say that one approach is better than the other, you just have to decide which is better for you depending on what you want to do.
Pros for DbQ • DbQ is right there in Profiler, so no need to go hunting for a separate program.
• It can handle head shots.
• It has a closer integration with DVD Profiler.
• It has a nice summary page.
• It tailors the output to the query. (Context aware).
• It is not entirely “profile centric”. You can, for example, run a query to find all cast that has a certain birth year and get a result with one line per person. PQ on the other hand is limited to queries that amount to “List profiles where ...”.
• It can do comparisons within a profile or boxset in some cases. PQ has recently added a couple of boxset queries that does that, but that’s all.
Pros for PQ • Most importantly, it allows for combinations of selection criteria.
• It has a more uniform user interface. (To what extent that’s a plus is subjective, I guess).
• Exporting your collection and loading it in PQ is faster than loading data in DbQ.
• You don’t have to re-export every time you start Profiler, only if your collection has changed significantly (and you decide what is significant).
• You can use PQ while Profiler is doing something else, like running a backup. In fact, you don’t have to have Profiler running at all.
• You can easily export the result to a spreadsheet for further processing or printing. You can do that in DbQ as well, but it’s just a little bit more complicated.
• Although you can get a lot of statistics from DbQ, the statistics page in PQ is more comprehensive and gives a better overview of the statistics. At least I think so.
• PQ has a Diary and Showcase that has no equivalent in DbQ.
• While the fact that PQ runs as a separate program means that it has limited means of interacting with DVD Profiler, it also means that it cannot hang it, crash it or corrupt its database. Not saying that DbQ does this, but all plugins have the potential to do so, which PQ does not have.
• PQ has a help file, and as of version 3.26.1 the help function is context aware (meaning that F1 will open the help file at the chapter that is most appropriate for where you are in the program). DbQ has some documentation on the download page, but it’s not very comprehensive. And there is no link to it from the plugin (as far I can tell). Much of both programs is pretty much self explanatory, but both programs have features that may need explaining.
Although DbQ and PQ to some extent cover the same ground, they are sufficiently different that
you really should give both a try. Depending on the task at hand, one or the other may be best suited for the job.
Links to the download pages:
Databas QueryProfilerQueryThere are also threads for both programs in the Plugins forum.