Skip to main content

VFP 9 Keynote - Reporting Features

SET REPORTBEHAVIOR 90
 
automatically turns on the new built-in preview app included with Visual FoxPro 9 with better zoom features, multiple pages and more. It's an XBase app so you can customize it yourself.
 
Goals: there were many , including the need to protect existing FRX investments
 
But Three key areas were changed:
Engine
Designer
Output
 
Both with features you can use immediately and others that are more extensible.
 
Engine can now handle multiple detail bands.
Designer now sports easier to use dialogs and is more extensible and have access to Report Protection.
Output - much more options
 
The new designer now works better for multiple character sets (multiple languages on a single report), right-alignment (no jaggies), better image resolution. The Preview now matches what's printed (thanks to GDI+).
 
Now you can actually use GDI+ to manipulate the output.
 
Multiple Detail Bands means that you can have one report with multiple detail bands. The detail bands link to each child alias in the Data Environment and then when they run on the report, you only get the data from each one. You can also go through the same data twice to do "pre-calculations" in one pass and then display it in another pass.
 
The Report Protection feature will let you lock aspects of the report designer so that users can only modify the parts of the report you want them to.
 
The new ReportListener lets you chain reports together so you can print (and preview) two reports together so they appear as one.
 
Exporting to HTML is now directly supported with the new ReportListener, including images (which are stored to a separate file).
 
The Report Listener can be subclassed so you can do cool things like highlighting individual text based on its value (without having to create multiple objects)
 
 
as well as all the great sessions here at DevCon on the report writer.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Merry Christmas

Whether you celebrate now, have already celebrated your past holiday, are planning to, or not, I hope you find yourself surrounded by family and those you love during this holiday season and are able to remember fondly those who are not with you. We often find ourselves buried in work, or too distracted by other problems, to share and remember a few moments with those closest to us. So many of us are separated by huge distances, we often find it easier to focus on those who are out of arm's reach yet so easy to connect with online, instead of those who are right beside us. So do yourself a favour, put down the keyboard (stylus, mouse, etc) and spend that time. I know I will. Merry Christmas. Powered by ScribeFire .
4 comments
Read more

Programmers vs. Developers vs. Architects

I received an email this morning from Brandon Savage 's newsletter. Brandon's a PHP guru (works at Mozilla) but his newsletter and books have some great overall perspectives for developers of all languages. However, this last one (What's the difference between developers and architects?) kind of rubs me the wrong way. Either that, or I've just missed the natural inflation of job descriptions. (maybe, it's like the change in terminology between Garbage man and Waste Engineer or Secretary and Office Administrator) So maybe it's just me - but I think there's still a big difference between Programmer, Developer and then of course, architect. The key thing here is that every role has a different perspective and every one of those perspectives has value. The original MSF create roles like Product Manager, Program Manager, Developer, Tester, etc - so every concept may pigeon hole people into different roles. But the statements Brandon makes are often distinction...
11 comments
Read more

From Writing to AI: the pattern repeats itself

When I was ten years old, my dad bought a computer and, thanks to an advertising supplement in a Superman comic I read, it was a TRS-80. A month later, he dragged the entire family (my mom and brother were not the most enthusiastic) to a class at Radio Shack teaching how to use microcomputers. At the time, I understood why my mom wasn’t that excited: the computer was yet another gadget in the house. But today I find it fascinating. My mother went to Vassar in the 50s. She learned how to type — not a common skill at the time — but it opened doors. Her ability to communicate effectively led her to a career in adult education and later communications work with the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). This isn’t a nostalgia post. Today, the ability to use artificial intelligence, be it through Copilot or simply writing the right prompt, is becoming a critical skill. But is it really that novel? In the 1500s and 1600s, the printing press gradually made reading accessible beyond cler...
Post a Comment
Read more