Report functionality

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Postby njw » Tue Feb 13, 2007 9:13 am

I know this was raised a little while ago, but I need to be able to create reports that take user entered selection parameters.

Any chance of this being included in the short term, as the available report writers I have found to fate either require complex (or inmpossible in my case) installation or don't work too well.
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Postby njw » Tue Feb 13, 2007 9:14 am

I need the ability to create pdf or equivalent output.
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Postby shannah » Tue Feb 13, 2007 10:35 am

Hi Neil,

Can you describe the type of reports that you need to generate and how the user should be able to interact. E.g. Do you need the users to be able to enter SQL directly, or is there another better way to enter the selection parameters. If so what parameters would the user need to configure.
What kind of report output did you have in mind? Just a table showing the results of a query, pie charts, or something else?

-Steve
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Postby njw » Tue Feb 13, 2007 12:23 pm

I was considering:

a form to be populated via an ini file, perhaps, with fields from a table. The form would offer for each field, whether to include it in the report and options to filter records - perhaps offer EQ, NE, LT, GT, BETWEEN a and b. Options to define a sort order and grouping would be good. Ability to create a Header description and/or footer would also be nice.

then a script to create the SQL code, run the select statement and produce a simple report, offering, say, HTML on screen and PDF or rtf to be downloaded.

Nothing complicated on layouts: html table format would be fine.

I don't think it's particularly difficult, and I developed something similar many years ago on a Vax, but my PHP is nowhere near the level that would be needed!!!

The reports I need now are really just dumps of text data, but I can't put them into Excel because one of thefields blows the cell limits.

I;ve done a fair bit of googling, but there doesn't seem to be anything out there.
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Postby shannah » Tue Feb 13, 2007 12:47 pm

Hi Neil,

It sounds as though you don't need very much more than the normal List view for your reports. Dataface allows you to do all of the finds and sorting you were talking about. The only thing that it doesn't currently offer is the ability to dynamically display or hide certain columns ; and it also doesn't allow you to put in custom headers and footers yet.

Correct me if I'm wrong here.

-Steve
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Postby njw » Tue Feb 13, 2007 10:42 pm

To a large extent you are correct. I need to be able to select on more than one field, but I'll play around with find to see whether that will work for me. The other issue is that one column is large text, so I probably need the ability to select a set of records and then print them in details view. Would that be easy to achieve?
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Postby njw » Wed Feb 14, 2007 9:41 am

I have come across this while you were sleeping in Canada, but even though it's a v1.0, it doesn't appear to work. Ah well!

Neil
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Postby shannah » Wed Feb 14, 2007 11:44 am

Creating a print view to print multiple records in details mode would be very easy to do.Ê I'll see what I can do in terms of making this happen.

-Steve

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sjhannah.com blog
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Postby njw » Wed Feb 14, 2007 11:54 am

Many thanks Steve. I have found a number of report generators that lookas thought they could do the job, but they are either very big downloads or they don't quite work. Frustrating!

Neil
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