The text report driver acts as an intermediary between
the text report and the program.
In most cases, you do not need to access the report driver that
the text engine creates automatically. The following cases are exceptions:
- In a web environment, multiple users can generate the same report
at the same time. To prevent name conflicts, use a driver that is
created from a unique scratch file.
- If you want to interact with a report you have printed, you can
review the report file and modify or reprint the contents by using
a driver.
- If you want to append your report to an existing file, the driver
supports this action. By default, the report engine overwrites an
existing file.
The report driver is an ExternalType part. You declare a variable
that is based on the part, and then call functions that you qualify
with the variable name. For a list of available functions, see Text report driver functions.
Remember: COBOL generation does not support the TextReportDriver
external type.