Use the EGL report engine to produce a simple text report.
This engine is particularly useful for migrating reports from Informix® 4GL.
The following steps provide a broad overview of the process of
creating an EGL text report:
- Create a basic Handler part. This program performs the following
actions:
- It declares a report variable that has access to the functions
and variables of the report engine. The report engine is an EGL ExternalType
part that corresponds to a Java™ class
when you generate for Java and
a COBOL program when you generate for COBOL. The declaration can optionally
change default format values such as margins, headers, and so on.
For more information on the specific values you can set when creating
the variable, see Creating a TextReport variable.
- It defines functions that are tied to specific events during report
generation. See Handler events for a text report.
- It passes control to the report engine, which calls the handler
functions as appropriate.
- Create a report generator program. This program performs the following
actions:
- It declares a variable that is based on the basic Handler part.
- It passes control to the handler program.
For a sample text report program and handler, see Writing code to print a text report.
The text report engine includes functions for most of the tasks
that you perform in the handler, including functions to start and
finish the report, to print lines, text, or white space, to manage
headers and footers, and more. For a complete list of these functions,
see Text report functions.
For more information on converting existing I4GL reports to EGL,
refer to the IBM® Informix 4GL to EGL Conversion
Utility User's Guide.