More of this Feature • Page 2: What's in a report • Page 3: History of QR • Page 4: Band reports • Page 5: Calculated fields • Page 6: Sorting & Grouping • Page 7: Label Reports • Page 8: QR components • Page 9: Without the QR

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Article submitted by: Tom Nesler.

   Report Overview and Philosophy
Report creation and use is the other half of modern business information systems. Just as forms design has become more demanding as programmers push the new GUI design metaphor, so also has reporting become more complex and demanding. Today's report programs need to be able to handle memo fields, graphs, images, as well as the basic form feed problems and the myriad of different printers to print from. No wonder reporting tools don't always provide a simple mechanism to get data on paper. Quick Reports has been a part of Delphi since Delphi 2.0 and has been the default report writer for most users of Delphi. It has come in several incarnations which will be discussed more in depth later. When working with report writers in general and Quick Reports in particular (which will be referred to as QR from now on), you need to understand what their strengths and weaknesses are as you begin designing reports. As with any tool, start simply, study lots of examples and experiment with them. As you become more comfortable with their quirks you will find that 99% of your reporting problems are solvable but remember: All printing programs rely on the Windows interface with Printers to do the actual dirty work of converting data into dots on paper. Sometimes it is not the limitations of the report writer that is the problem. It is the Windows printer object that is failing to deliver or the driver software for the printer you are working with that is at fault.

   TIP #1
Sometimes getting the latest driver will help solve a printing problem. When in doubt always go out to your printer manufacturer's website and download the latest driver. On the other hand, it is often necessary to modify Windows printer settings by using a simpler print driver to achieve what you want. For example, using a standard HP 4si/mx driver may work better than using HP's latest printer driver for a specific print problem. Since you can specify many different printers which are using the same port, you can change the default programmatically so you can print a particular report the way you want.

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