Conditions are used in Report Writer to determine the following:
Condition to total
Condition to extract on the lowest table
Condition to extract on the fast pass table
For example, you can have a condition to extract records on the fast pass table:
REGION_CODE=LOOK_AT_REGION
where LOOK_AT_REGION is a region code entered at runtime.
Formulas are used in field processing to set the value of a calculated field. For example, the following formula prints a running total for detail lines:
PREVIOUS $ + 1
The expressions for conditions and formulas use the same syntax. They differ in that the expression for a condition must evaluate to TRUE or FALSE. So, it must result in a Boolean (Yes/No) data type. The expression for a formula must result in the data type of its calculated field.