OUTPUT TO REPORT
The OUTPUT TO REPORT
instruction provides
a data row to the report execution.
Syntax
OUTPUT TO REPORT report-name ( parameters )
- report-name is the name of the report to which the parameters are sent.
- parameters is the data that needs to be sent to the report.
Usage
The OUTPUT TO REPORT
instruction
feeds the report routine with a single set of data values
(called an input record), which corresponds usually to
one printed line in the report output.
An input record
is the ordered set of values returned by the expressions that you
list between the parentheses following the report name in
the OUTPUT TO REPORT
statement. The specified
values are passed to the report routine, as part of the input
record. The input record typically corresponds to a retrieved
row from the database.
RECORD
variable and best
practice is to define a user defined type (TYPE
) in order to ease the variable definitions required in the code
implementing the report driver and the report routine definition, for
example:SCHEMA stores
TYPE t_cust RECORD LIKE customer.*
...
DEFINE r_cust t_cust
...
OUTPUT TO REPORT cust_report(r_cust.*)
...
REPORT cust_report(r)
DEFINE r t_cust
...
OUTPUT TO REPORT
statement is included within a WHILE
, FOR
, or FOREACH
loop, so that the program passes data to the report one
input record at a time. The example uses a FOREACH
loop to fetch data from the
database and pass it as input record to a
report:SCHEMA stores
DEFINE o LIKE orders.*
...
DECLARE order_c CURSOR FOR
SELECT orders.*
FROM orders ORDER BY ord_cust
START REPORT order_list
FOREACH order_c INTO o.*
OUTPUT TO REPORT order_list(o.*)
END FOREACH
FINISH REPORT order_list
...
Special consideration is needed when using OUTPUT TO REPORT
with row
ordering. For example if the report groups rows with BEFORE GROUP OF
or AFTER
GROUP OF
sections, the rows must be ordered by the column specified in these
sections, preferably by the report driver to avoid two-pass reports.
If OUTPUT TO REPORT
is not executed, none of the control blocks of the report
routine are executed, even if the program also includes the START REPORT
and FINISH REPORT
statements.
The members of the input record that you specify in the expression list of the OUTPUT TO
REPORT
statement must correspond to elements of the formal argument list in the report
definition; in their number and their position. They must be also of compatible data types. At
compile time, the number of parameters passed with the OUTPUT TO REPORT
instruction
is not checked against the DEFINE section in REPORT
of
the report routine. This is known behavior in the language.
Arguments of the TEXT
and BYTE
data types are passed by
reference rather than by value; arguments of other data types are passed by value. A report can use
the WORDWRAP
operator with the PRINT
statement to display TEXT
values. A
report cannot display BYTE
values; the character string <byte
value>
in output from the report indicates a BYTE
value.