Compare patterns in legacy reports and graphical reports

This table answers some common questions about the correlation between Report Designer and traditional Genero BDL legacy commands in reports:

Table 1. Legacy Report to Genero Report Writer
Legacy Report command Using Genero Report Writer

BEFORE GROUP OF groupname

SKIP TO TOP OF PAGE

In the Report Structure view, place the Page Root container as a child of the element you want to group by.

Figure: Page Root as child of group

This figure shows the report structure for the Order Report. The nodes are in the following hierarchy: OrderReport.4rp, Group userid, Group orderid, PageRoot.

AFTER GROUP OF groupname

SKIP TO TOP OF PAGE

In the report design document, add a Break element

Figure: Break

This figure shows a report with a page break.

BEFORE GROUP OF,

AFTER GROUP OF

 There is a GROUP trigger for data control breaks in the report structure. The position and contents of the child containers of the trigger determine what is printed out and when. See Print group totals and report totals.
ON EVERY ROW In the ON EVERY ROW statement of the BDL file, the PRINT statement just sends the data items to the report engine. The report design document specifies what is to be printed out for every row of data passed to the report.
SPACES, format strings All of the formatting for the report line is done in the report design document. These keywords are no longer used in a PRINT statement in the BDL file.
PRINT In the report design document, the Data View tab displays the list of data items in the order in which they are specified in the PRINT statement.
ON LAST ROW

Drop a container positioned as the last child of the page root. The contents of the container will print out after the last report row.

Figure: Contents on last row

This figure shows the Report Structure with the totals printed on the last row of a report

See Display totals on a report.
NEED n LINES Put all the report elements that need to be kept together in a Vertical Box Layout Node container. If there is not sufficient room on the page to print all of the elements in the container, the entire container will be printed on the next page.
PAGE HEADER, PAGE FOOTER

Avoid using these control breaks, which are triggered by the line count of the BDL report, which does not correspond with the actual page breaks in the report output by Report Writer. Create page headers and footers in the report design document instead.

Figure: Headers and Footers

The figure shows headers and footers in the Structure View.