Report and Presentation Manager (RPM) - by Lodestar Software

by Jim Mumford

Published 1998-07-01    Printer-friendly version

I've been using the Standard CW previewer that comes with Clarion for several years and have had a couple of people ask me why they must print the whole report. Recently, while looking at one of the third party CW demo products (not RPM) that comes on the CW CD, I noticed how well the report previewer worked on their product. In examining the demo I noticed immediately that zooming in and out was really simple. Additionally, I realized that the end user did not need to print the whole report. I looked around a little more and determined that the demo was using Lodestar Software's Report and Presentation Manager (RPM) as its previewer. I remembered someone mentioning how good RPM was several years ago, but I had not pursued it, so when Clarion Online asked me to review RPM I was really extremely excited. Now I could really get a chance to learn what RPM could do for me. I must say I was not disappointed.

More great features for you and your users

• Printer Selection: What if you want your user to be able to select the printer to print to, after viewing a report. You have this option with RPM. Lee White, the author of RPM, warns you that this can produce unpredictable results. I asked Lee when this would be a problem. He told me it would only be a problem when you select a totally different printer type, like laser printer, and then try to print on a dot matrix. Since my users all print on laser printers, I decided to allow this option.
• Printing Current Page: Just press the Print this Page button and you print the page you are viewing.
• Save Paper: For those who are environmentally conscious or want to save money, RPM allows you to print 2-up, 4-up and duplex (even without a duplex printer).
• Search, Mark and Print: Have your users ever wanted to search for words or phases within a report, mark those pages that match, then select other pages, and finally print all the marked pages? Again, RPM lets the user have control.
• Print Same Report Multiple Times: Mark some pages, print the marked pages. Mark some different pages, print those. Then print the same marked pages 2-up. Now unmark all the pages and print the entire report. Again, your end user has control.
• View Options: When you are viewing a report you have all kinds of options. Go to the first page, go to the last page; view 2-up, 4-up, 6-up, full width, full height. Zooming is a delight for a user with RPM, left click zooms you in, right click zooms you out. (I sure wish Acrobat worked like this!)
• User Report Defaults: Report view and print defaults can be changed and saved for each report. For example, one user may always want to see a specific report as 2-up and print 2 copies with 2 pages per page. This can be set by report for each user.
• Page of Pages: I always like my reports to show Page # of # Pages. RPM can do this.
• Archive Reports: This is what document management is all about. RPM allows your user to archive reports. When the user is ready to retrieve a report, s/he uses the archive management tools that come with RPM to manage the archive process. These tools allow users to view/print or delete archived reports.

with Marked pages and Page of Pages)

• Customizable End-User Dialog or International Support: RPM lets you customize your screens and text. This is done by using an INI file and changing one of the DLLs.
• Export to Text File: This removes all the special formatting and leaves you with a plain ASCII text file. A user could use this to export to a comma delimited file.
• Chain Multiple Reports Together And View/Print As One: This lets you view/print multiple reports at one time. You could do this with a lot of hand coding - Better yet, let RPM do it for you.
• CPCS Compatibility: Yes, those of you that have CPCS should also consider getting RPM. RPM can really make your reports shine.
• Newspaper Column Reports: This is an RPM add-on that allows you to print newspaper column reports. You can print column reports top to bottom or left to right. Currently this does not work with the ABC templates, only with C4 - Clarion templates or 2003.
• User Help: All these features sound great, but how do you teach your end users? Not a problem - most of the features are very easy to use. Plus, for those end users that have questions, Lodestar Software provides a Help file that you can distribute with your applications.

Installation

RPM's installation went quite smoothly. Lodestar is using a self contained Windows based install program. I especially like that the install shows you what changed in this version at the very beginning of the process, before you install RPM. I wish more install programs did this. Additionally, the install had a separate verification window informing me that this version would only work for C4a and would not work for prior versions. It found my Clarion4 directory on drive G: and defaulted to that location. I liked how it informed me of the location of my Clarion directories.

I did have to register the RPM templates manually, which I prefer.

Implementation

RPM is a very robust product with a ton of features that are easy for the developer to implement and especially easy for the end user to use. I was extremely impressed.

Once I installed and registered the templates, I placed the RPM's Global extension template into one of my existing applications. I then proceeded to place RPM's Standard extension template into each report. Just doing this gives you a new report previewer with many of the features mentioned above. I ran some tests and found I wanted some things a little bit different than the default. Rather than changing each procedure individually, I changed the Global defaults. Then I went into each report, and deleted and reinstalled the Standard extension template. (Figure1 explains why it must be done this way.) This gave me the Global defaults that I set up. This is fine when you only have a few reports as I did in this application, but I would like to see some better Global default capabilities. The next time I got a little bit smarter and only placed RPM into one report until I figured out how I wanted my default set. Then I went through and placed the Standard extension template into the rest of the reports.

Global Defaults Options

Setting up a chain of reports was extremely easy. First, determine which report is the base report (this is the first report in the chain). Make sure the RPM: Standard Report extension template is on the base report. Within your base report you place the RPM: Shuffle, base report extension template, select either Merge (Shuffle) or Append (generally you will choose Append), then specify each report that you want to chain to the base report. For each chained report you add the extension template RPM: Shuffle, chained report and do NOT include the RPM: Standard report extension. That is all you need to do to chain your reports.

RPM Shuffle

What about NCR (newspaper column reports)? I gave it a try and it was quite simple as long as I followed the directions in the Help. First, you must have the RPM: Standard report extension for the procedure that you want to print NCR reports for. Then you must also select the NCR report extension. It essential that you have some additional Detail lines defined with the correct labels and that they are given a FALSE filter. Then on a standard Detail line, you place your column report information. Much of this is taken care of in the Default.CLW file. However, if you are converting an existing Column report, you need to add some of these items manually. All of this is mentioned several times in the Ncrtpl.hlp file.
[Review Editor's Note: NCR is an add-on product for RPM and must be purchased separately. See the ordering info at the end of the review for details.]

Performance

Implementing RPM was much simpler than I would have expected. For a product with so many features, it is extremely easy to implement. The only problem is determining which feature to use. As a rule the defaults RPM has selected are a good starting point, until you learn what you and your users want.

I was afraid at first to let my end users select their defaults for a specific report. Now that I've examined how that feature is implemented, I intend to use it in most of my application.

I have implemented RPM in one of my installed applications and have not had any complaints or problems. All my future CW applications will use RPM, and I plan on going back and installing RPM into the rest of my existing Applications.

Documentation

You do not get a printed manual, but you get both a Template Windows help and an end user Windows file with RPM. Both help files are very well organized and quite complete. I prefer a good help file to a printed manual for a product like RPM. Lodestar Software also provides you with an example App that shows you a lot of RPM's features, which are very helpful. I did find a few features (very few) that had not been added to the documentation.

Technical Support

I have talked to Lee White, the author of RPM, on a few occasions, and have always found him helpful and extremely knowledgeable. It was also my experience that if I sent Lee an email I would get a response within 24 hours (often within a couple of hours).

Summary

RPM is great template that gives the end user some fantastic report management capabilities. I am especially impressed with the Mark, Search, and Archiving capabilities. RPM lets you easily add these features to your applications, giving them some reporting features your end users will be impressed with. These features can help sell your applications.

Your end users will really enjoy the capability of setting up their user report defaults. For each report, you can give the end user the capability to set an option on how a report is previewed and printed. For example, if the end user always wants to view a specific report as 2-up he can set that as a default for that report. If the end user always want 5 copies of that report, printed 2-up, the end user can set this up. Once your end users grow accustomed to a feature like this, they will wonder how they lived without it.

As a developer I was impressed with the Report Merge feature of RPM (which RPM calls Shuffle). This gives you the capability of either shuffling pages from multiple reports or appending reports together, then the end user sees multiple reports as one.

I could only find a few user features that I wish RPM had. I wish you could go to the next/previous marked page (this is on Lee's list). It would also be nice if you could swap Marked pages (those marked become unmarked, those unmarked become marked).

As a developer, I would like to see a global default capability. This would let me set my defaults once and have them replicated throughout my application.

 

Category	Product Score
Ability to do the task	Excellent
Ease of use	Very Good
Ease of Installation	Very Good
Documentation	Very Good
Technical Support	Excellent
Modifies Shipping Templates	No
Black-Box DLLs/LIBs	Yes*

* RPM includes source code for one of the DLLs. This is the DLL that controls the end user dialogs so that the product can be internationalized.

RPM is available through the TopSpeed Accessories program (1-800-354-5444) or direct from Lodestar Software for $229. The NCR add-on is available from Lodestar for $59. Lodestar Software's Web site is http://www.lodestarsoftware.com. You can also reach Lee White on CompuServe: 74067,3441 if you are a CompuServe member, 74067.3441@compuserve.com via the internet..

Vendor comments from Lee White of Lodestar Software

The version of RPM that was reviewed does not include the pending ABC version update that provides these changes and additions to RPM: Shuffled/Merged reports may now be passed parameters. Local variables have been added to make referencing the report and preview queue easy in any embed regardless of class and there is also a byte flag that indicates the open status of your report structure to alleviate the dreaded "Window not open" runtime error. Append multiple reports, in varying orders, without the need for one of them to be pre-defined as a "base" report. Insert a report anywhere you please within another report. Use segmented renumbering within a report. Such as 1of3, 2of3, 3of3 followed by 1of4, 2of4 etc... Automated renumbering of multi-page break groups. Global print/preview watch. Set a single variable to any one of 6 different print and/or preview options without having to define the options on every report. Automatic resizing image controls for your reports. Set the maximum area you want to dedicate and let the templates do the rest. And as is usually the case... lots of options. As noted these improvements are for the ABC template family only. Since TopSpeed has adopted this family as the future of Clarion, Lodestar Software has no alternative but to focus in the same direction. The legacy versions of all our products, including RPM, will continue to be migrated as needs demand but future extensions to these products will be limited to the ABC family only.

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Clarion Magazine ISSN 1718-9942