Sample Reports for the SALESORD Database

This section describes five sample programs that you can run against the SALESORD database, described in Appendix C. They demonstrate how to use the Report Writer to create some typical business reports:

• LISTING

  A standard detail report listing database fields in columns

• MAIL

  Lists customer names and their addresses for mailing labels. This report makes use of the fold field facility, within field processing, to print fields down the page

• TOTALS

  Lists customer order details by region. This report demonstrates useful techniques, such as:

  • The use of start and stop values which allow the user to specify the range of regions to be printed when running the report
  • How to print a running count on each detail line

  • How to print a block of statistics after each region category, including the total number of records, the total value of orders and the average value of orders

• RUNTIME

  This report prints the same information as the TOTALS report, but shows you how to make use of a runtime field to create a report for the region specified by the user at runtime

• INVOICE

  A customer invoice on pre-printed stationery. In this report, the standard Report Writer page headings are switched off, and the predefined variable TODAY is used to print today's date