These topics are designed to help you understand and use the Report Designer, the Report Engine and, most importantly, the Report objects in dBASE Plus. They will introduce you to how the many different report objects relate to one another, and the steps needed to create reports programmatically and with the Report Designer.

Note

dQuery/Web’s One-Click Reports offers another method for designing and generating reports. For more information, see dQuery/Web Help.

Reports vs Labels

Labels are just reports with a different extension (.LAB instead of .REP), and multiple streamFrames (one per label). While it is possible to set up a group on a label, the practical uses for doing so are, at best, minimal and won’t be discussed. Other than that, everything in discussed in these topics is relevant to labels as well as reports.

The dBASE Plus Report Engine

The Report Engine in dBASE Plus is called a "banded report" engine, meaning that the processing of your data occurs through "bands". When the Report is rendered, bands and other Report objects are processed in a specific sequence.

When processing a report, the dBASE Plus Report Engine makes only one pass through the various objects, including the table, as is therefore also refered to as a "Single Pass" engine.

While a "Multiple Pass" process, needed to generate "Page 1 of x" type output, is possible to set up, its’ complexity puts it beyond the scope of this material.