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New Blog Posts: Merging Reports - Part 1 and Part 2

Getting Started

edited January 2002 in General
Hi all. I'm a newbie just getting started. In the past I had used Quick
Report Artist. Now I just got ReportBuilder Pro. There are differences in
the way to work with these two products, and I think it is causing me
problems. I was wondering if someone can point me in the right direction.
I went through the entire Learning Report Builder Tutorial and read much of
the Report Builder manual, but I'm still hitting snags in getting going.

With Quick Report Artist, I had a separate report writer where I designed my
reports based upon Quick Reports. Then I would use a report loader
component to load the saved report and print it. In many of my forms, I
would place this loader component in a data module because I wanted the
program to print contracts, checks, or other forms directly without user
intervention. Several different forms would use this one data module.

The problem is that now with Report Builder, I put the Report component on
the data module, and when I go to design, I get a warning about problems
with putting it on a data module. Sure enough, when I try to use designer,
I get all kinds of problems. I got access violations, then the system hangs
for three to five minutes at a time, and at one point, I got a complete
lockup.

What is the proper procedure here? If I want to print directly, is there a
way to do this from a data module? Am I right in assuming that I do not
design reports in a separate designer, but that I access it from the Report
component as I did in the tutorial?

One other note: I am using Flash Filer for my database. I connected the
pipeline to a datasource that was connected to that datasource, but when I
click on the data tab in the designer, then click Data New, I only get the
BDE tables of the demo's I used in the learning module.

I'm floundering here and I'm not sure why. Maybe I just have a mental block
because I'm use to doing it a certain way with Quick Report Artist, and now
it is different. If someone can point me in the right direction, I would
appreciate it. If I want to print without user intervention, and I'm not
suppose to put the component on a data module, then how should I do it? I
also read not to put it on forms which have frames imbeded. Most all my
forms have frames embedded. Any advice about how to get started would be
appreciated. Note that I want to load all reports from files saved
externally.

David Miller

Comments

  • edited January 2002
    Only in Delphi 6, will the datamodule design time problems disappear. Since
    you are using Delphi 4 or 5, then you'll need to place the report component
    on an invisible TForm.

    You need a DADE plugin. The plugins allow you to connect to non-BDE
    databases. There should be a full end user example in your installed
    ..\RBuilder\Demos\EndUser Databases\FlashFiler2


    Cheers,

    Jim Bennett
    Digital Metaphors


  • edited January 2002
    I hope I'm not too off topic here, but how do you create an invisible TForm
    that does not require user action to close it?

    With regard to installing the packages necessary to use ReportBuilder with
    Flash Filer, I began working through the directions supplied with Report
    Builder and got stuck at number 7 under compiling the DADE package. When I
    go to compile the rbFF55.dpk, I get "Required Package 'F201_R50' not found."
    I searched for a name like this, but could not find it. Any advise?

    David Miller

  • edited January 2002
    Just add a form to your project. Make sure it isn't the Autocreate form
    which gets shown when the app is run. Set the form's visible property to
    false. The form will get instantiated when you run the app. Since you can
    use the form in other form units, then you can create and call public
    methods on your report form, to print a report or load a report template
    into the report object.

    You must have a different version of FF2 installed. Check for any installed
    FF2 packages with a name similar to this. Then change the requires clause
    of our package and recompile.


    Cheers,

    Jim Bennett
    Digital Metaphors


  • edited January 2002
    Thanks. I did have a newer version of FlashFiler. I was looking for a file
    name, when I should have looked at the package names.

    -David.

This discussion has been closed.