QED MD - Components - Reports

The majority of the Mappings which you create will have a Report component. Any Mapping which produces output to view or print needs a report component, to define the layout of the information to be presented after processing.

Note that the report component does not actually produce the output itself; the instructions to print specific lines of the report are contained in the level components of the Mapping.

Report layouts are defined in terms of lines; each line of a report may contain fixed text or fields of variable information, separated by spaces as required. The way data is displayed or printed in fields is controlled by edit masks and field presentations, which can define such things as the number of decimal places displayed in numbers and whether negative numbers are indicated by parentheses or leading or trailing minus signs.

Report layouts can include headers, footers, title pages, page numbers, report date and any other information required.

All report definitions are based on templates. Templates define such things as the page width and page length of the output. Templates supplied with QED include standard widths (132 and 80 columns) and standard lengths (65 lines).

Lines in the report definition which contain fields referencing database information have associated entities. The associated entity is the same as that for the Level which uses the report line.

When a Mapping runs, output produced using the Report component is termed a document. The document may be viewed or printed using standard system utilities (as shipped, QED uses of the e5 spooling system). Because physical printing is not a QED function, it is not described here; you will have separate instructions specific to your installation provided by your System Administrator.

NOTE The menu path shown is the default for the system. Your company may have customised menu options, so the path shown may not be accurate. Please contact your system administrator for details.