Reports allow you to gather data extracts from the system database and display them in a user-friendly way. To view data, you can display the report on the screen or print it by creating a report print layout.

Data selection rules can be determined by both the developer and the user. Reports are managed in the Report settings directory. This directory contains system reports that are created by the developer and included into the Tillypad XL setup package; it also can contain user-created reports.

Reports can be used in both Tillypad XL Manager and Tillypad XL POS.

Reports use queries written in the Transact SQL language. If you know how to write queries in this language, you can create new reports or make changes to the reports already stored in the directory.

Before executing a query, a preliminary data selection can be performed. These data will be reflected in the report. If data need to be filtered before executing the report query, a filter wizard will appear.

One or more data sets appear as a result of the query. A separate data model is described for each data set. Data from the model are used when displaying query results in the report viewing window.

Reports include print layouts. A print layout can be modified in the FastReport editor. For more information on how to work with this tool, please refer to Generating print layouts with the FastReport generator .

The viewing window of a report can contain multiple panels. You can add different commands to the context menus of the report data grids. These commands include, but are not limited to, the following functions: opening editor windows, operational report windows, etc.

Inheriting reports and print layouts

In practice, situations often arise where different reports contain the same data, e.g. company details, corporate identity elements, etc. If you ever need to make a general change to all of these reports, you would need to change each of these reports individually.

To facilitate these kinds of changes, we have created report inheritance. A baseline report serves as a base for the purpose of inheritance. It contains data that will be shared by other reports. Derived reports contain all data from the baseline report, as well as their own data. Changes made to the baseline report are applied to all of the derived reports as well. In a derived report, you will not be able to change the query, data sets, or report model.

Any report from the Report settings directory can be used as a baseline report.

To make an existing or newly created report derived, you will need to specify its baseline report in its attributes. To create a derived report, please use the Create based on command from the context menu.

There are following kinds of reports: simple reports, reports used to export data into an XML file, and reports used to export data into a binary file.

The query of a simple record returns a set of tables with data. Based on these data, you can generate different print layouts. To display data in different languages, you can generate separate print layouts for different languages. A print layout can be derived from the print layout of any object in the system: report, software module print format, screen form print format.

The query of the report used to export data to an XML file returns data as an XML file with a pre-defined structure. Print layouts of such reports are used to preview report data. By using an auxiliary XML file, you can get a set of tables with data, similarly to the simple report.

The query of the report used to export data to an XML file returns data as a binary file. Reports of this type do not use print layouts.