DEPRECATED MVZ Developer Guide to Reporter

Originally posted by DK Thung 11 Feb 2011

A guide for developers to the Report Generation in Arctos (i.e. labels, ledgers, etc)

Introduction

This guide will cover a brief overview of the reporter design/structure and the steps to adding/editing a report.

Design/flow of reporter

The flow of generating a report is as follow: 1) Generate data from inputted SQL 2) Apply pre-label function to data set result 3) For each row in the formatted data set, fill in the uploaded report template use the specified variable names. 4) Redirect to page where user can download the pdf/csv/specified format.

This is only a general/brief overview. If you need more information, Dusty (the author of Reporter.cfm) is probably a good person to ask.

To add/edit a report

Programs required (in addition to the set listed in DeveloperGuide)

+ Coldfusion Report Builder (google for the latest version) 

Adding a Report

1. Create a report using Coldfusion Report Builder.

   a. Data field names should match the column names in the database's table OR the variable name in the pre-label function.

2. Create sql statement to return a data set that you want (joining tables, etc). 3) If the sql statement alone is not enough to give you the desired data set (i.e. need further formatting, need other data not easily available through a join, etc), then navigate to "/trunk/Reports/functions/label_functions.cfm" to add a pre-label function.

   Use "

   " to retrieve the sql data set. Most often, "cfloop query" function is used to iterate through each row of the data set to modify each row.

3. Finally, go to arctos-test->Manage Reports and upload the template you created in Step 1. 5) After successful upload, find in the list of reports the report you just uploaded. 6) Give it a name, add pre-label function (if any), and add the sql statement. 7) Test for and fix any errors in arctos-test. 8) Repeat steps 1-7 in arctos-prod.