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The Report Designer 

Printed-paper and PDF reports are generated within the system using the FastReports printing components.

These provide a professional report-design interface. Developers write SQL in the system to allow users to run queries which return data. At this point the FastReports interface takes over, allowing data to be organized into many different formats

Orixa uses a "Banded Report Generator", this is a common type of reporting tool. Designers wishing to use Orixa reporting will find it quite easy if they already have some experience with Banded Reports.

Examples of Reports

Reports Example: Simple Billing Report  

 

Reports Example: more complex multi-part layout

Reports Example: Pie Chart  

 

 

Reports Example: Multi-column  

 

Reports Example: Data-Cube and Chart  

 

Basic Concepts in reporting

Purposes of reporting in any system

  1. Production of business paperwork such as receipts, wage-slips, purchase-notes, delivery notes etc.
  2. Production of internal paperwork for permanent business records, such as attendance forms, quality tests, questionnaires etc.
  3. Creation of management reports for sales, performance and activity of a business.
  4. Generation of data for sharing with customers, suppliers, project partners, auditors etc.

Typical Features of reports

 

Brief highlights of the report-designer

The FastReport report designer is extremely fully featured. It has a dedicated PDF help manual which covers most areas of its operation in great detail. There is also an active FastReport website and newsgroup for detailed questions. For more information please visit this:

Fast Report Website

The following section of help gives a brief overview of the report-designer, as an introduction. This should introduce a few of the basic concepts used by the report designer.

As with all other areas of Orixa, your system comes with a range of pre-designed reports. A good way to start to experiment is to create a copy of one of these, and try working with it.

Report Designer Main Window: Note that the exact layout of this screen can vary.

  1. Page area, drag and drop items onto the page for them to be included in any print-out.
  2. Report Title Band. Items included in this section of the report-template will print at the start of the report.
  3. Group Header Band. This section will be printed conditionally when data in the report changes. If data supplied to a report contains "customer" records, the group header band can be used to group data by the customer.
  4. Master Data Band. More detail on all types of band are provided below.
  5. Group footer band. This is printed after the data-field that has been set to group the report changes. This area can be used to show summary data.
  6. Data, variable, function and classes. These tab-headers give the report-designer access to different elements can can be included in the report. More detail on all these items are provided below.
  7. Datafields list. When Orixa sends data to a report the available fields are displayed here. These can be dragged and dropped onto the report to be displayed when the report is printed.
  8. Report elements treeview. All the items on the report are shown here. Click on any one to select it.
  9. The Properties Inspector. All items on a report are shown according to values set for their properties, such as font-size, height, width etc. Once items are selected these properties can be edited here.
  10. The main tool-bars. These give rapid access to editing the properties of elements of a report. Toolbar buttons control commonly used properties such as alignment, font-size, the width and colour of borders etc.
  11. Report element toolbar. More details about this item are supplied below.

Detailed Features of the Report Designer

Report Designer Preview  

 

Previewing Reports

Most of the time when you produce a report the main thing you want to do is to view the finished report.

This can be done at anytime by selecting "Preview" from the "File" menu, as shown (1.) on the left.

Report Designer Add Band  

 

The main report design window

Once a report is open in Design Mode, design window will show.

To add bands:

  1. Click the "Bands" button on the Elements Toolbar.
  2. Click to select the type of band you want to use

Once the band is added you can drag it around the report to place it in the correct order. Dragging is only possible with some types of bands. For example, page header and page footer bands are fixed in position.

If the report is a standard "banded report" it will appear somewhat similar to the image. The main types of data-band are:

  • Report Title Band
  • Page Header band
  • Group band: This will show data returned to the report, and breaks, reprinting whenever this summary data changes.
  • Data band: All individual rows of data, separated by the Group band.
  • Group footer: This will show data at the end of each group, including summary data such as totals and counts.
  • Page Footer band.

Report Designer Object Inspector  

 

The Reports Object Inspector

All the properties of every report element can be edited from the Object Inspector (shown left).

You can use other tool-bars to set many properties, but many can only be set from the Object Inspector.

Select an element (or elements) and then edit the properties, and you will change how the element(s) are displayed in the finished report

  1. Align: Choose whether text aligns right or left or is stretched to fit across a data-band.
  2. AllowHTMLTags. If this property is set to true, text elements that contain common HTML tags such as "<b>" and "<i>" will display bold or italic.
  3. Datafield / Dataset. Select items from these lists to pick which data-field is used to populate a text-element.
  4. Display Format (explained below) allows formatting of date / time / number fields.
  5. Stretch Mode: When a Text-element is placed on a report you may want to manage how it appears if text "overflows" the available space. StretchMode allows you to do this. Note that if a text element is set to "Stretch To Fit" then the band must also be set to stretch.

Report Designer Add Datafield  

 

The "Data"Listing

  1. Click on the "Data" heading.
  2. Click on a data-field. Drag it to where you want to display it

Report Designer Aligning Content  

Main Toolbaers

All the toolbars in the report designer act on selected elements of the report.

  1. Shift-click on items to select as many as you want
  2. These buttons control the aligning and sizing of report elements.

   

Report Designer Format Text  

Formating text and numbers

When displaying numbers in your report you will usually want to format them to suit your local currency.

Click on the item in the report design which holds the number-field, and then find "Display Format" in the Object Inspector. Clicking on it will open the window shown on the left, allowing complex formatting of data returned by your App.

The same process is usd to format Dates and Boolean values to suit your local needs.

   

Report Designer Add Text  

Adding text, including fields

When you add a new field to a report the memo-editor shown to the left will open.

This is a powerful editor which can be used to add text in many formats to your report. 

The following sections show how to add system data-fields, copmuted fields and App data-fields.

  1. Click on the "Text Element" toolbar button.
  2. Type in the text you need, and click "OK"
  3. Note that a text element can include many specialized forms of data, aggregates and functions (described below).

   

Report Designer Adding data  

Adding data-fields and computed fields

Use the "expression editor" from the Memo editor to add items such as the current date and time, page number etc., to your report.

The resulting items will show in the report-page in the form:

[Date]
[Time]
[Page#]

  1. Item selected on the report.
  2. Text editor.
  3. Data addition window, with expression editor.

 

Report Designer Highlighter  

 

 Setting values for fields to be Highlighted 

The Orixa report-designer supports conditional formatting so that numbers can be presented in different color, or with bold font depending on their value(s).

  1. Select the "Highlight" tab.
  2. Click on the Add Button.
  3. Create a condition which will trigger highlighting.
  4. Alter the style of the highlighted text.

    5. More details are provided in the FastReports documentation.

Report Designer Add Columns  

 

Page properties

Double-clicking on the main "report-page" in the report-designer opens the "Page Options" window, shown on the left.

This allows alteration of the page layout, page margin and including creation of multiple columns on a page.

 

  1. Select the number of columns and the width and position of each column.
  2. Set other general properties of the report, including allowances to make continuous reports.

Report Designer Multipage reports  

 

  Multi-page reports

Reports can consist of more than one "page", pages are used to hold different representations of data in tabular, chart, data-cube or other formats. Each page can hold data-bands and summary bands.

More details are provided in the FastReports documentation.

  1. Click on the "Add page" button in the main-toolbar.
  2. A new, blank page will be added to the report template.

Report Designer New Report Wizard  

 

Report-creation wizard

When creating a new report it is often useful to use the built-in Report Wizard, shown at 1., in the image on the left.

This opens a multi-step tool which allows you to choose features for your report and automatees a lot of the basic work laying out rows and columns of data-fields.

More details are provided in the FastReports documentation. 
 

Report Designer Add Image  

Adding Images

Static images (such as company logos) can be added to any report. If an images field is linked to image data from the database a report can include multiple images (for example pictures of products or staff members.

  1. Click on the "Images" element in the Elements Toolbar.
  2. Open the "pick file" dialog
  3. Select the image from a file on disk (for a static image)
  4. Image is displayed on the final report.

Report Designer Data Cube  

 

Data-cubes

The FastReport system includes ability to add complex summary presentation of data.

More details are provided in the FastReports documentation. 

  1. Click on the "Data Cube" button on the Elements Toolbar.
  2. Drag fields from the data0field list to the correct row, column and content list-boxes.
  3. Set styling of individual parts of the data cube, and show it in a report.

Report Designer Add Chart  

 

Charts

Can also be added to reports.

More details are provided in the FastReports documentation. 

  1. Click on the "Charts" button in the Elements toolbar.
  2. The Chart-editing window appears, click on the "Add-chart-series" button.
  3. Select the type and style of chart needed.