• Report Overview
• Getting Started with Reports
• Creating Reports
• Report Structure
• Ordering and Selecting Records
• Grouping Related Records
• Headers and Footers
• Linked and Sub Reports
• Adding System and Calculated Fields
• Printing Techniques
• Design Techniques
• Generating Reports
• Managing Reports
• Quick Reports
• Layout Table Reports
• Using Reports Created in SQL Server Reporting Services in an Alpha Anywhere Project
• Charting in Reports
• Table of Contents, Bookmarks, Index

Report Overview

Description

An overview of the capabilities of Reporting in Alpha Anywhere.

Reports are Alpha Anywhere's most versatile type of layout for printing data. Reports can group related records together, perform calculations, select and order the records shown, divide pages into columns, and conform to just about any format you define.

Reports are created by placing fields, text, and other objects into "edit regions." "Edit regions" refer to areas on the layout in which you alter the appearance of the layout.

The edit regions that appear in a report vary according to your needs. A simple report may consist of the report header edit region to print the title of the report, the detail edit region to list the records in the table or set, and a report footer edit region to display totals or other summary information. With Reports you can:

• Add, remove, and edit the sections of a Report

  Reports layouts are divided into sections, which in turn are divided into edit regions. Edit regions are where the objects of a Report are placed on the layout.

• Group related records together

  You can create your own sections called groups to group related records together. This is helpful if you have data that you want to divide into logical segments. For example, you have a list of sales figures for every day of last year. You can use a group to divide the records into months, and print monthly totals in the Report.

• Order and select the records that appear in the Report

  You can order and filter the records that appear in the Report by storing order and selection criteria in the Report, by letting the user decide at print time, or by using a combination of the two.

• Insert calculations to display totals, averages, and other values

  Calculations can be performed using data from one record or from multiple records. Summary calculations, such as totals, averages, and standard deviation can be performed using records in individual groups or using every record in the Report.

• Set page-formatting to prevent sections from being split across a page

  Alpha Anywhere gives you control over a report's page layout. You can keep sections and edit regions from being split across pages; you can set the minimum number of records to appear on a page, and more.

• Create page headers and footers and continuation headers and footers

  Alpha Anywhere allows you to create both page headers/footers and continuation headers/footers. Continuation headers and footers are special sections that appear only if an edit region or section has been split onto a second page. For example, you may create a continuation footer for a customer Report that states "Customers in Massachusetts continued on the next page."

• Insert page numbers, today's date, and other report-related information

  When a report is run, Alpha Anywhere keeps track of certain information such as the current page number. You can also create page numbers for groups that reset when a new group of records begin.

• Use sub-reports to organize data from sets

  Alpha Anywhere lets you create sub-reports, which are literally reports within reports. The most common use for this is to print data from sets which contain two or more one-to-many links defined at the same level. For example, you have a set that tracks customer-accounts. The set links a table containing account information to two tables; one table contains a list of charges; the other contains a list of payments. Both are defined using one-to-many links. You can create a sub-report for the charges table and a sub-report for the payments table so that you can display both side-by-side.

• Divide a Report into columns

  Columns can be used to divide an entire Report or a single section. This lets you create newspaper-type columns to fit more data on a page.