Report Framework

[joseggarza]

I am trying to make a few reports and while researching I found http://users.telenet.be/quartam/reports/ but it looks dead, I could not buy it. I tried to contact them without any luck. Any of you have information about this software developer? or any other options available?

Thanks
JG

[Lagi Pittas]

Hi


Same her - 4 emails over the space of a year and no answer.
It looked good because it works like the Foxpro Report write I have used for years.

Now this would be a good third party app to have for the indy or business version if LC Towers is listening.
Most non business use (games and utils) wouldn't need it so you would have something that desktop developers would find useful.

Regards Lagi

[FourthWorld]

Perhaps we need a new report tool. What sorts of reports are you looking to make?

[Lagi Pittas]

I can do all the reports I need at the moment using the built in commands but it's nice when you have comfortable shoes and report writers are a way that business developers (ex Foxpro, Access, Delphi, Clipper people) might see as a reason for jumping in.

Seems to me we are gonna be wrapping Crystal Reports and Jasper reports as widgets - but a native report writer would be better.

Lagi

[FourthWorld]

I agree, which is why I'm asking about specifics. Reporting can take on so many forms that it would be daunting to attempt to cover everything at once, but with some guidance on which formats and features are most immediately useful perhaps we can get a team to do this or I might do it myself.

[mimu]

Yesterday evening i had a very promising phone call with Jan Schenkel of QuartamRepots.

At the moment he is involved in a very time consuming project using livecode server.
But the project deadline is close.

He told me that he will release a bugfix release for the current version during the next 2 month,
Version 2 for LC8 will hopefully be available before the end of this year.

So lets stay tuned.

[joseggarza]

I am very new to LC and I could not find any tutorials on how to create report in terms of pagination. I Guess, I can just make some queries and insert the data in a Card, but I don't know how to make different pages based on tons of data and grouping, just like any other Report system. I am trying to figure how to do this with what is in LC but it is taking me lots of time and I have not been able to a do it at all. I am getting to a point of just getting crystal or jasper or even Access to do it, but I don't want to get another system just for reporting, so I though of asking in this forum for advice before taking this decision.

JG

[Mikey]

Jan told me, a year ago, that QR was going OSS, but repeated badgering has resulted in silence, so I'm not holding my breath.

In the meantime, you can use Valentina, which is being actively developed, and has native hooks into LC.

[MaxV]

I am very new to LC and I could not find any tutorials on how to create report in terms of pagination. I Guess, I can just make some queries and insert the data in a Card, but I don't know how to make different pages based on tons of data and grouping, just like any other Report system. I am trying to figure how to do this with what is in LC but it is taking me lots of time and I have not been able to a do it at all. I am getting to a point of just getting crystal or jasper or even Access to do it, but I don't want to get another system just for reporting, so I though of asking in this forum for advice before taking this decision.

JG

The easy and short way for reports:

1. create a substack as template for reports
2. put all fields needed
3. extract data from you database
4. line after line fill the fields of the template
5. after filling the last field, use this command:

   Code: Select all

   clone this card

6. repeat points 4 and 5 to the end of your data
7. now you can print/export in PDF your report with:

   Code: Select all

   go to card 1
   set the formatForPrinting of this stack to true 
   open printing to pdf "./myprint.pdf"
   print this stack   
   close printing
   

8. now delete cards n down to 2 and empty fields of card 1 for future reuse of the template.

You need about 15 minutes of coding to do this.

[joseggarza]

MaxV,

Thanks for your solutions,

I will try it. I think is the best an cheapest solution. Valentina is just out of my budget right now.

Best Regards,

[gagsoft]

Hi Guys
Any news on the wrapping Crystal Reports in LC.
This would be good news to me.
Used it in previous Delphi projects a while back and the results were really impressive.

Would like to here if there are any efforts regarding wrapping Crystal Reports in LC

Peter G

[FourthWorld]

IIRC Crystal Reports is available for only one platform, and most folks use LC for multiplatform apps. So I don't think we'd see much attraction for Crystal Reports in this audience. Using it would be great for Windows, but then you'd still need to write everything it does from scratch anyway for every other OS.

[joseggarza]

I just found a good way to make Awesome reports using Crystal Reports by SAP.
Well, the solution is simple. I found a website from a guy in Malaysia (https://www.rainforestnet.com/) who made an external(DOS) Executable to run the crystal reports and send them to the printer or other outputs. You can
find this program at github (https://github.com/rainforestnet/CrystalReportsNinja) . it has like 21 Forks and the source code is there in c# I sure you can compile for other platforms.

my program in Livecode does everything(even all the SQL Queries) and at the end it just send the right information as parameters to this executable. This Executable does the rest, it sends the job to the printer.

This is by far the best way I have found so far to run awesome reports.

JG

[gagsoft]

Hi Guys

Used Crystal reports for many years now but still have it on my wish list for LC.
I am sure there are enough users using LC that would be willing to pay for a proper report builder in LC.

Best
Peter G

[Mikey]

There is/was one that was supposed to be OSS'd but still has not been (and needs some fixes). I agree that RW is big-time lacking. The other tools we use here all have RW's and don't rely on CR.