InetSoft Product Information: Structured Reporting

Style Intelligence gives you production-grade report development with the desktop Report Designer tool. The following sections walk you through creating and saving a new report. For complete information about report design, see the Report Designer.

Before creating a new report, you will need to choose one of two layout types, flow layout or tabular layout. The tabular layout is best suited to reports that have rectangular partitions, like a web page using a table for layout. The flow layout is often used for brochure-like reports with multiple columns or fixed panels.

If your new report is going to be one of a series of similar reports with common features, you may want to first create a “meta-template,” and then use that meta-template to create the new report. Otherwise, you can just create a stand-alone report, as you will do in the following example.

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Creating a New Report

In the following example, you will create a simple sales report, starting with a 'Blank Tabular Report'. Then you will add some report elements to display data and other report information. Follow the steps below:

  1. Launch Report Designer from the Windows 'Start' menu: Start → Programs → Style Intelligence → Report Designer.
  2. Click the 'New Report' button in the Report Designer toolbar. This opens the 'Create Report' dialog box.
  3. In the 'Create Report' dialog box, click the Create From Wizard tab.
  4. Select 'Blank Tabular Report' and click 'OK'.

This opens a new blank report in the Report Designer window.

You will design your reports by adding presentation elements such as text, charts, tables, and sections. Text elements are used to add headings and labels. Chart, table, and section elements are used to display data. All these elements are initially empty when you first add them, and you must explicitly bind them to a data source.

You can add elements to a report by using the 'Insert' toolbar menu, or by clicking the buttons on the left-side toolbar Elements can be added in the report body or to the headers and footers.

reporting software chart
reporting software chart
reporting software chart
reporting software chart

Adding Text and Presentation Elements

In this example, you will add a title and page numbering to the report you created in Creating a New Report. Follow the steps below:

  1. Click on the 'Header' button in the top toolbar to select the header. The insertion point indicator (a black triangle) appears at the top left edge of the header.
  2. Click the 'Text' button in the toolbar. An editable gray box appears in the header.
  3. In the text box, type “Sample Sales Report”. Click outside of the box to finish editing.
  4. Click the new Text element to select it. Use the controls on the toolbar to change the font to Tahoma 24-point Bold Underline. Then click the 'Center' alignment button to align the Text element on the page.
    • You will now add automatic page numbering to the report footer. Page numbers and date/time stamps are generated by the report engine at the time of report generation.
    • You can add these dynamic elements by placing special tags in the report header or footer. Follow the steps below to add page-numbering to the report.
  5. Click on the 'Footer' button in the top toolbar. The insertion point indicator appears at the top left edge of the footer.
  6. Click the 'Text' button to add a new Text element to the footer. In the text box, type “{P} of {N}”.
  7. Click anywhere outside of the footer to deselect it. The footer is now complete.
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