Creating and Editing Reports

Creating and Editing Reports

To create a new report, open the Reports Window. And using the right-click menu (or the menu bar) select Create New Report.

This will bring up the Report Editor Window.

The Report Generation Process

To create your own Crystal, email merge, or word document merge reports, it helps to understand the report generation process.

Reports are generated as follows:

1.	The instructions for creating the report are extracted from the database, along with definitions for each Data Extract.

2.	Martial Class™ determines any parameter information for the Data Extracts (which venue, date, account, or student is selected, etc).

3.	The definitions (in SQL) for extracting the required data are modified internally to recognise the parameters.

4.	The modified extractions are run against the Martial Class™ database.

5.	This results in a data file (MS Access format, HTML, CSV, EXCEL, etc) with data corresponding to the Extracts configured for that report.

At this point, if the report was to a disk file, then the process ends, otherwise the following occurs:

6.	If the report template is for word, then MS word is launched and instructed to merge the result data into the template document.

7.	Otherwise, it is a Crystal Report, so Martial Class™ generates and displays (or prints) the report in a new window.

So to create a report you need the following:

1.	A report definition (name, etc)

2.	At least one Data Extract definition for that report (you can have more, unless creating for a mail merge). Data Extract Definitions comprise of both a set of Selection Criteria and a set of Result Columns.

3.	A report template (only required if you are merging or formatting the data).

The following sections describe how to create these components.