Report Builder?

pelkofg053 · Post by **pelkofg053** » Thu May 11, 2006 9:19 pm

Hello All:

The dictionary documentation for the revPrintReport command references a "Report Builder" being available from the "Tools" menu; however, I don't seem to have that option available.

The "Menu Builder" and the "Database Query Builder" are listed under the "Tools Menu", but not the "Report Builder".

I'm using the 30-day trial version of Revolution (version 2.7.1, build 236) on Windows XP Professional.

Is this a limitation of the demo? Or have I failed to call and/or install something?

Thanks,

George

Mark · Post by **Mark** » Thu May 11, 2006 9:49 pm

Hello George,

It seems you are new here. Welcome to Revolution.

The report builder that is mentioned in the docs is a remainder from the past. You can still find it in the Toolset folder of your Revolution application folder, but maybe it should be moved to the Unsupported folder. The stack is called revReportSetup.

Although it may still be possible to use the report builder, it is not straightforward.

The Report Builder is not in the menu, because it is unsupported, note because of any limitations.

Best regards,

Mark

mfstuart · Post by **mfstuart** » Fri May 12, 2006 12:18 am

So Mark, how would one get this loaded/to work? Even if it is not supported, can't we get this to work?

Mark

Mark · Post by **Mark** » Fri May 12, 2006 1:06 am

I believe one needs to open the reports stack as a palette. I never took the time to figure out how to use it, though. One needs to define a card as a report card and after defining a report, you can use revPrintReport to print the report. Check the docs for more information about the legacy report features. You also might want to check out http://www.runrev.com/section/revselect ... /index.php or write your own reports generator ;-)

Best,

Mark

pelkofg053 · Post by **pelkofg053** » Fri May 12, 2006 2:34 am

Mark:

I'm currently evaluating Revolution.

A fair portion of my programming needs involve databases, thus I was looking for some sort of a report writer/generator (which I assumed/hoped would be included in the Revolution product itself).

It appears that a report writer is available as an add-on (Quartam).

Am I correct in assuming that there is no support for activex controls/tools such as Crystal Reports in Revolution? I didn't come across any info in the docs. Admittedly, such support would hinder cross platform compatibility.

Thanks,

George

Janschenkel · Post by **Janschenkel** » Fri May 12, 2006 4:15 am

Hi George,

You are correct: Rev doesn't support ActiveX controls because they're Windows only. Quartam Reports was written entirely in Revolution and doesn't rely on any platform-specific features.
Give it a whirl and see if it does the trick for you - if you need a feature that it doesn't have yet, drop me an email and I'll see what I can do.

Few general-purpose development tools come with their own full-blown report generator, leaving it up to the developers to build their own framework or rely on a third-party product.
Database tools usually do come with a report generator, but you wouldn't get as much flexibility and media-oriented support for quicktime players and anti-aliased graphics or even rich/styled text fields is pretty rare.

Jan Schenkel.