Hi guys,
I worked on different reporting tools like "crystal reportS" and MS-ACCESS and WebFOCUS,I found out that this tool doesnt have enough strength at free form placement ,The reason why i am posting is i am currently working on a replicating MS-ACCESS applications with this product,I had problems trying to replicate ACCESS since ACCESS has great degree of free form capability,If you guys have any suggestions on this please let me know

I would suggest using the Resource Layout tool that is part of Developer Studio, release 5.2.1.

This tool provides the capability to create self service reports and graphs, with pixel positioning, static and dynamic dropdowns, images, etc.

I'm curious how free-form would apply to how you display the fields on a simple report.

For example, say you want to display one page per query row returned, with the fields from that row displayed anywhere that you want on the page. I don't see how you can do that in resource layout.

It isn't very free-form. Try aligning columns from two line in the free-form report - not pretty.

There are some folks at Hartford Insurance who have shown us (at a users group meeting) some very lovely free-form reporting, and their output is done with TABHEADING, HEADING, SUBHEAD,SUBFOOT , FOOTING and RECAP . Its amazing what they could produce with these report features. And their output was in PDF, which is the most restrictive and painful. If your output is HTML, freeform of course can be anything you can think up.

If their solution allows for the use of picture graphics/logos, plus flexibility in fonts and highlighting, I'd be curious to know how they did it.

From what I've tried, based on what was in the documentation (set style off, set stylemode fixed), I get no formatting - I may as well be developing in Cobol on the mainframe. As well, report painter couldn't be used to help reduce development time.

I'm sure with enough effort, you could get something halfway decent, but I want to be able to develop something in 5 minutes, not 5 days. Unless I'm missing something - if not, please tell me this will be enhanced in a future release. (we're on 5.2.6, upgrading soon to 5.3.2) Thanks, Brad

For us who have used crystal report, i think we just have to stop thinking or even stop comparing how easy it is to do free formating in crystal report...we just have to deal with it and make our way how we gonna do it webfocus...albeit not like crystal!

Inside...
if you come to the users group meeting in New England (August this year), i'm sure the 2 developers will be there. That's where i saw their presentation. They had used HEADING, TABHEADING,SUBHEAD, RECAP,SUBFOOT AND FOOTING

WebFOCUS 7

Everyone WebFOCUS 7 has a PDF painter that allows for more advanced freeform painting of Reports.

The PDF painter allows you to move objects (text, images, etc) around except, correct me if am wrong, individual datafields which Crystal is known for - Unless you embed/import/reference an existing report into the pdf painter thats how you kinda wrap around datafields...but not individually.

On the side note:
"...That's where i saw their presentation. They had used HEADING, TABHEADING,SUBHEAD, RECAP,SUBFOOT AND FOOTING.."

Yes, am pretty sure it can be done too in WebFocus...no doubt 'bout that. But if we're talking about "rapid development" of free form reports, it's not really that easy...oh well, once you get the idea, it becomes easy anyway - NO FEAR WebFocus


cheers,

guys

i think ive found a somewhat similar feature to Crystal's but quite limited (only in Page Heading/Page Footer section) when doing free formats. When in the Report Painter screen, you need to turn on the Alignment Grid tool/option. It will let you define the number of rows/columns you want and all other options such as justification etc. Once you have those grids, then you can start painting your fields along with other objects such as text, images etc. You can add/delete items or cells by right clicking on existing ones or modify each cell's size according to the look and feel of your report and do all other stuffs such as conditional formatting, drill down etc.

Though a number of Crystal's features i would love to see in Webfocus (persuade Gerald Cohen to install Crystal in his pc ) ...like format your date data fields (e.g from mm-yy to long date format) or any other fields thru GUI right in the Page Heading section and all other gazillion GUI tools/features. GUI is the keyword for rapid development i guess it makes life easier but for now, am happy...the free form report it took me an hour to do yesterday (with all the back and forth from GUI to hand coding the style sheet), after i played with the Grid Alignment tool was reduced to 5 mins yay for that!!!Feels like Crystal hehehe

cheers,