Design Techniques
Description
Tips and techniques for designing reports.
- Name
- Description
- Reverse Sets for Reporting Purposes
Reverse sets are any easy to use and powerful solution to getting at your data. If is often necessary to "drill-down" and filter records based on data in a child table of a one-to-many set. Although this is certainly doable from the one-to-many set structure, it is easier and sometimes a clearer approach to query the data from a reverse set.
- Dividing a Report into Columns
Alpha Anywhere lets you split the detail section, a group section, or the entire report into two or more columns. This lets you make better use of space on a page and to save paper. When you divide a section into columns, all edit regions within the section are divided into columns.
- Designing Reports for Sets with One-to-Many Links
When you run a report, Alpha Anywhere treats a set as a single, composite table. For example, you have a set that links accounts to their respective debits and credits. For each record in the Account table, the Debits table can have multiple charges, and the Credits table multiple payments, Set Diagram:
- Reports with Different Left and Right Margins
It possible to format a report, so that alternate pages will have different left and right margins. This technique requires two steps:
- Reports - Free-form Reports - Text Dictionary Tags
You can now use text dictionary tags (...) to internationalize the labels in a report.
- Optimize Report
The Optimize Report menu option, available in the Report Editor and defaults to 'enabled'. Optimize Report has no effect on flat Table based reports, but in the case of set based reports, it will prune any tables from the set that are not referenced by the report.
- Previewing a Report, Label, or Letter
To preview a report, label, or letter.