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The Report Designer can be reached via the Report Manager or a Workspace Report.
Report Designer with an example report
The Report Designer has three tabs:
Each of these will be explained below.
Report Data
When you create a new report, the Visual Query Builder will open, you can create a new query or paste a query from the SQL Editor into the bottom part of the Visual Query Builder. Make sure to link a data band to a data set.
Report Designer, tab Report Data
You can view the report query or modify it using the Visual Query Builder button on the right.
Report
The Report tab has several sections. On the left you find the report outline, objects you can add to the report and object properties, and at the right you have the data items.
There's a number of tool bars in the Report Designer, they offer following functionality.
Tool bars explained
The Standard tool bar.
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| • | New Report Wizard - select a wizard to create a new report, can help to speed things up |
| • | New Report Page - adds a blank page to the current report |
| • | Delete Page - deletes the current page from the report |
| • | Page Settings - opens a page settings dialog for page size, margins and so on, you can also add page columns here |
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| • | Cut, Copy and Paste - clipboard functionality for report objects |
| • | Undo, Redo - undo or redo your changes |
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| • | Group - creates a group of the selected report objects. Objects in a group are selected together if you select at least one of the objects |
| • | Ungroup - break up a currently selected group into the individual objects |
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| • | Zoom - adjust this to zoom in or zoom out the designer workspace |
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The Align tool bar.
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| • | Grid - toggles the designer grid on and off |
| • | Align to Grid - when moving objects, aligns the object to the nearest grid coordinate instead of moving smoothly |
| • | Fit to Grid - use this button to re-size the current object to the nearest grid related size |
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| • | Align Left - aligns left side of the selected items to the left side of the first item in the selection |
| • | Align Middle - aligns the selected items to their horizontal centers |
| • | Align Right - aligns right side of the selected items to the right side of the first item in the selection |
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| • | Align Top - aligns top side of the selected items to the top side of the first item in the selection |
| • | Align Center - aligns the selected items to their vertical centers |
| • | Align Bottom - aligns bottom side of the selected items to the bottom side of the first item in the selection |
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| • | Space Horizontally - space equally in horizontal direction |
| • | Space Vertically - space equally in vertical direction |
| • | Center Horizontally in Band - centers the objects horizontally in the band or page they're on |
| • | Center Vertically in Band - centers the objects vertically in the band or page they're on |
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| • | Same Width - re-size items to be the same width as the first item in the selection |
| • | Same Height - re-size items to be the same height as the first item in the selection |
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The Frame tool bar.
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| • | Top, Bottom, Left and Right Line - toggles frame lines on and off |
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| • | All Frames - sets frame lines for all sides on |
| • | No Frames - removes frame lines from all sides |
| • | Frame Editor - shows Frame Editor dialog with frame sides, style, color, width and shadow |
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| • | Background Color - fills the background of the selected objects with a color |
| • | Fill Editor - shows the Fill Editor dialog with options for the background fill |
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| • | Frame Color - sets the color for the frames |
| • | Frame Style - selects the frame style, like "solid", "dash" and so on |
| • | Frame Width - sets the frame width |
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The Text tool bar.
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| • | Manage Styles - opens the Style Editor dialog, allowing you to create and modify the styles for this report |
| • | Style - select one of the available styles to apply to a (text) object, displays the style name if the current object has a style assigned |
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| • | Font Name - the font for the current selected object |
| • | Font Size - font size for the current selected object |
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| • | Bold - toggles bold font style on and off |
| • | Italic - toggles italic font style on and off |
| • | Underline - toggles underline font style on and off |
| • | Font Settings - opens Font Settings dialog with all available font options |
| • | Font Color - sets the color for the font |
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| • | Highlight - opens Highlight Editor dialog for conditional font style, frame, fill and color changes |
| • | Rotate - rotate the current text object |
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| • | Align Left, Middle, Right - aligns the text in the current object to left, middle or right |
| • | Justify - inserts spaces between words so that each line is complete filled to match the object width |
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| • | Align Top, Middle, Bottom - vertically align the text in the current object to top, middle or bottom |
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The Tools and Objects tool bar.
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| • | Select Tool - the default tool that allows you to select items |
| • | Hand Tool - use this to drag the page around |
| • | Zoom Tool - you can use left and right mouse buttons to zoom in and zoom out |
| • | Text Editor - hold left mouse button on the designer canvas, drag and create a new text object |
| • | Copy Format Tool - allows copying the format of one object to another: select an object, select this tool, next click on other objects to change their formatting |
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| • | Insert Band - inserts a report band like "Report Title", "Page Footer" and so on |
| • | Insert Sub-report - insert a sub-report, a new report that can be embedded in the current report |
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| • | Text - a basic text object, can be static text, can contain database items, or combinations |
| • | System Text - quick system text object that allows to display page numbers, record counts, current date and so on |
| • | Rich Text - allows to display rich text formatted text |
| • | Picture - display a picture from file |
| • | Chart - display a simple or complex chart, can be histograms, pie charts and so on |
| • | Checkbox - display a checkbox |
All these items can be linked to data fields
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| • | Cross-tab - display a cross tab, fill it manually, data can be fetched from a data source |
| • | DB Cross-tab - display a cross tab, fill it from a data source, with header labels taken from the data source |
| • | Table - create a table with rows and columns, data can be fetched from a data source |
| • | Cellular Text - displays characters in a table, but each cell contains a single character |
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| • | Zip-code - machine readable zip-code |
| • | Gradient - used to display gradient color based items on the report |
| • | Draw - used for shapes, like circles, rectangles and (arrowed) lines |
| • | Bar-code - used to display bar codes on your report |
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Report Designer
The center holds the report design itself.
A report consists of 'report bands', by default there's a Report Title, Master Data and Page Footer band. Make sure to link each data band to a data set.
Available bands:
Report Title
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Printed once, at the beginning of the report
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Report Summary
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Printed once, at the end of the report
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Page Header
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Printed at the top of each page
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Page Footer
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Printed at the bottom of each page
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Header
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Printed once before a set of data, eg the Master Data
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Footer
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Printed after a set of data
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Master Data
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The main data set
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Detail Data
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Additional data set based on/linked to the previous data set
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Additional Data Bands
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More data bands can be added
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Group Header
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Printed before a data group
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Group Footer
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Printed after a data group
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Child
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A child band is printed directly after its linked parent band, this can be useful when an object distorts the layout of your items vertically: move the items below it to a child band.
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You can add labels, lines, graphics, page numbers, bar codes and tables to the bands of the report.
In addition to these report bands, you can create groups of data via the Insert Band button.
This will open the Group Dialog.
Group Dialog
Once a group has been created, a Group Header will be added, for each group, a Group Footer band can be added to the report. A group will put several 'detail bands' together under a group, eg, multiple orders per customer.
Preview
The Preview tab shows the report with the data, here you can try-out your report and see if it shows the data how you like it. You can also use this tab to print the report.
Report Designer, tab Preview
The toolbar has several buttons related to zoom-factor and page-navigation. At the left there's a list of available pages, the large area on the right shows the actual report pages with your data.
By using the Print button, you can either send the report on a printer or create a file, like PDF, HTML, Excel or Word.
Print Report dialog
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