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To design reports you need to have a printer installed on
your computer. In case you do not have it you will not be able to design
reports! |
Before going to designing reports, we have to take a look at the terminology
used:
Report
The term "Report" describes a printout of data records from a database. The
report defines the look of the printout (layout, fonts, arrangement of data
fields, etc.). For example if you want to print a list of addresses, you use a
report to tell the computer which fields of your address database to print and in
which order. A report can print data as a list, page by page or any other way you
want your data to be printed.
Table
A file with data records of the same type is called table, e.g. a file with
address information, parts or invoice items. A table can be a single file, for
example a DBase or Paradox file, or it can be part of a database (see below).
Query
A query consists of SQL statements, which are used to access a table or
database and to retrieve a group of data records. SQL means "Structured Query
Language" and is a kind of programming language for relational databases. A complete description
of SQL is beyond the scope of this manual, but there are many books available
on this topic.
Dataset
A dataset is used as a collective name for tables and queries.
Database
Queries and tables can be grouped together in a database, which can be a local
file on your harddisk or a database server in a network. To access a table you
need either its directory if it is a single file, or you need the database
name if the table is part of a database.
Alias
Aliases are descriptive names available as placeholders for pathnames or
databases.