"AccessPro" Report Writing/Editing, Stacking, Saving, and Tracking

• several major utilities comprise the report writing system:
  • The INFO/ACCESS (RECALL/ENGLISH/UniQuery) Query and Reporting language
  • The Microsoft Access Tables and Reports and Excel Spreadsheets and Charts
  • Report writer creator/editor and library
  • Very Probably the Best TCL Stacker in the World
  • Spooler Control Menus
  • Word Processing of Purveyor Documents via E editor, Jet/Sed, Microsoft Word, NotePad, and WordPad. Documents can be turned into pdfs via Word.
  • Load spooler items into Excel, Notepad, Wordpad, Jet/Sed, E editor, or MSWord
  • Do SQL-like Joins using JOINER (LIST.HANDLER), which allows the use of a list is statements such as:
  1. SELECT FILE WITH JOINER = "SavedListName""DictName"
  2. SELECT FILE WITH JOINER = "FileName;ID""DictName"
  3. SELECT FILE WITH JOINER = "fileName;ID;Att#""DictName"
  • To explain, sentence #1 has the effect of doing SELECT FILE WITH DictName = "ABC""DEF""GHI" where ABC, DEF, & GHI are elements in a saved list called SavedListName.
• the MultiValue INFO/ACCESS/ENGLISH/RETRIEVE/RECALL language allows even the novice to make professional quality reports from the relational database with only minimal practice, supporting full sorting and selection capability, column totalling, averages, multiple file access, headings and footings.
• for those familiar with Microsoft Access and Excel, data can be transfered from INFO/ACCESS reporting to Microsoft Access and Excel for custom reporting, graphs, and analysis.
• the report writer provides an interface to the user which facilitates the creation, testing, and maintenance of these reports over time, by allowing reexecution, storage, merging, and editing of reports. In addition, it provides a library in which the report/query scripts can be catalogued and made available only to those menus which have a relationship to the report. Reports/queries can be directed to the printer, the screen, or MS Office. The screen option is especially designed for easy and complete viewing and paginating through reports and queries. MS Office downloading not only downloads but launches the application into that query. "Leading zeros on ID/Keys are preserved!"
• The TCL command Stacker is the sophisticated tool used by the Report Writer to save, list, edit, and execute/re-execute commands. It has both dot (.) commands and GUI cursor-controlled editing and re-execution. Users may design their own prompts containing such things as current port, current stack#, select list present flag, and more. There is special functionality built-in to support multi-line SQL statements. It also has a large, extended command set which leaves little or nothing out, and on-line help which shows how to make these commands. It has the important debugging feature of capturing not only commands entered through the stacker, but, optionally, by throwing a switch in the stacker, of capturing commands executed through EXEC.SUB. Command stacks can be downloaded quickly, using a quick dot (.) command, into Notepad, Wordpad, Jet/Sed, or MS Word for editing and reloading into the Stacker for TCL execution. Multiple lines can be re-executed from one (.) dot command. Command execution may be audited for security and data intefrity reasons, on a user-by-user basis. Valid verbs and invalid files may be specified for each user. Text can be highlighted, cut, copied, dropped, and pasted, using mouse, shift-arrows, shift-home, shift-end, ctrl-a, ctrl-x, ctrl-c, delete, and ctrl-v. This data can then be pasted to anywhere the BB4GL is used. (The BB4GL has a clipboard which is sync'ed with the MS Office clipboard by default when using AccuTerm.)
• the spooler control menu unveils the mysteries of the spooler and provides for the safe manipulation of the spooler by even the most inexperienced users.
• the editor can be invoked to provide the more talented users with a means to make more delicate alterations of larger report paragraphs.
• an audit file can be maintained by the system to track past TCL command usage if troublesome commands have been invoked or you want to track general usage.
• RRM and RRR provide easy means of running saved TCL stacks from menus. They provide for screen, printer, or MS Office downloading. RRM is automatically invoked during executes (using EXEC.SUB) of SORT and LIST Access report commands destined for the printer, once a simple one-character parameter has been tweaked.
• an AVERAGE B-correlative which can be used with any numeric dictionary item to perform an average on that column at the break and total lines.
• the PERCENT B-correlative provides the ability to compute the percentage of one column versus another and on the break lines and total lines as well. This is available on all of our supported platforms, including QM, except UniVerse and UniData.
• SLP, GLP, DLP, ELP, CLP provide similar functionality to SAVE-LIST, GET-LIST, DELETE-LIST, EDIT-LIST, COPY-LIST, respectively, except that they append the port# to each item name, for added security and data integrity in multi-user environments.
• SLA, GLA, DLA, ELA, CLA provide similar functionality to SAVE-LIST, GET-LIST, DELETE-LIST, EDIT-LIST, COPY-LIST, respectively, except that they append the BB4GL user name to each item name, for added security and data integrity in multi-user environments.
• SL, GL, DL, EL, CL provide shortcut commands for SAVE-LIST, GET-LIST, DELETE-LIST, EDIT-LIST, COPY-LIST, respectively.
• B.TRIM, B.TRIMF, and B.TRIMB are B/call/U-correlatives which can be called from dictionary items to do the corresponding TRIM, TRIMF, or TRIMB Basic function on the data.
• CALL is a TCL verb which will call any cataloged subroutine from TCL.
• See PowerTools Database Maintenance Utilities for more related, useful TCL/Access verbs.
• Available in Smart User Interface and Graphical User Interface.