ReportDAT! Express - from Grebar

Posted December 1 1998

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Grebar's product has an exclamation in its name. It's well deserved. This is an interesting and very useful product. After looking at the demo it already had one "!" from me. As you read, you'll see it earned even more...

Depending on how you look at it, either I'm absolutely the wrong person for this review or exactly the right person. I'll explain. I have never had a need to create a tabular report. I have no experience creating them. I don't expect to need to create tabular reports any time soon. Obviously I'm the wrong person for this review. On the other hand, who better to try and see how easy it is to do than someone who doesn't know what he's doing?

Did you just ask, "What is a crosstab report?" Glad you asked. A crosstab report summarizes data into a 2 dimensional grid - it doesn't simply list data from the file. Think of a spreadsheet where you have a bunch of columns representing the months of a year and a bunch of rows representing the various salesmen in your company. Your report might then show the total sales per month per salesman, laid out in a grid. This is a crosstab report. They also do more than just totals - you can also do counts, averages, calculate MIN or MAX values, and do Standard Deviation and Variances on fields in your files

As I said, I began by compiling and trying the demo app. It worked flawlessly and gave me an impression of a solid product. Ooh, those colors! The demo not only has demonstrations of various features, but it also has an explanation of what is being seen. Nice demo! Grebar did something very smart with their demo. When you print a sample report, the name of the procedure is stated in the report footer so you can go back and examine how it was produced. Good going!

Installation and Setup

As is true with virtually all templates, you must install the product, register the templates, and then add the templates to your app. ReportDAT! comes as a self-installing exe. At the beginning of the install it produces a "Read-me" file and moves you into Wordpad. This is a good thing, but the document needs a little work. While well written, there is critical information at the beginning of the document and at the end. In between there is information that's nice to know, but not critical. These two critical chunks should be placed together. Since I'm one of these weird people who actually read instructions, though, I had no problem doing the install.

As I said, once it was installed, I compiled the demo app. But after checking out the demo it was time to setup my own app.

My first issue, since I've never found a need for tabular reports, was what application should I try this with. I decided to use a G/L app.

On the way to my first app

I started by reading the manual. Here comes another exclamation point. There are two manuals - one for the developer and one for the user! Yay!

I started with the 96-page developer manual. It has a table of contents and an index. A cartoon-like bubble has just appeared above my cartoon-like head. It says, "What is this, a love-fest? I'm gonna have to find something to complain about." Unfortunately, I like to read my manuals while sitting in an easy chair. "Blast." I wondered "how long will it take to print 96 pages." Seven minutes later, I knew.

The first thing I noticed on reading the documentation is that there is a tutorial. I decided to use the tutorial. The tutorial has you delete a procedure in the demo app and recreate it. The whole process consisted of choosing the Crosstab procedure type and filling out three fields on the procedure report properties screen. That was it. And it worked!

Now it was on to my G/L app. I was filled with confidence. Not even a thought of something going wrong. I noted one critical issue: I had to choose an app that used legacy (non-ABC) templates, since ReportDAT! Express requires non-ABC. This is a definite limitation. It's not a fatal problem, however, since one can create a program using the legacy templates and then invoke that program from within the ABC-template program.

In any case, since my G/L app used the legacy templates it was ideal for the test. I began by adding a new report option to my Reports menu. I then added the procedure choosing Crosstab as the procedure type and using the wizard (yes! (Another one) there's a wizard) I filled in the three fields of interest: field for the rows, field for the columns, and the item to calculate on. That was it. Time to compile and run. Of course there were no problems.

When I selected the report in my running app, a message popped-up asking if this were a new report. I clicked on the new report button. Here is what I saw

ReportDAT! User options dialog

I now chose various options on each tab presented and had the opportunity to choose titles for the report and for the columns and rows. The user can even choose what type of calculation to be performed (Sum, Average, Percent, Min, Max, Std. Dev, and Variance). I saved the information and clicked the print button. A flawless report! Remember this image is something the user will see. The user, at run time, without any effort from you, can be allowed to change everything from column heads to colors. By the way, you can also prevent the user from having such options.

Pushing the envelope

You will remember that I had first checked out the demo application. I now went back to that app to see what else I could learn about ReportDAT! Express. There is a feature that gives the developer the ability to highlight certain values in the report. For example, I decided to show all values greater than 1000. The feature is called "bingo chips", from the circular chips that a bingo player places on numbers as they are called. First I'll show you the final product so you understand what I was trying to produce.

ReportDAT! in action)

Notice that several of the items have red ovals highlighting the numbers. Creating this required reading and following a couple of simple instructions. The feature uses an embed called "Set Conditional Cell Property." Select this embed; then press Insert / Source. Now, here's the only moderately tricky part. From within the source editor select File / Import and use "\cwrdat2\condcell.emb" as the file name. This brings in a whole bunch of code that you can essentially ignore. Near the beginning of the code you'll find the following lines.

Case CT FieldType
Of e_Celtotal

Following the example in the manual I added the following lines.

If CT_PrtNum > 1000 then
     Bingo::MarkCell =1
     Bingo::ColorFill=Color:Red
End!if

I found this simple to do and, again, it worked first time.

Tech Support

The documentation mentions the ability to create a "Super Wide Crosstab Report." I wondered what this was and even after reading the excellent documentation I still wasn't positive. So I emailed Grebar support and received the following response from Barry McClure.

"A "Super Wide Crosstab" is one that is too wide to fit onto the page, so it has to be printed on 2 or more pages. ReportDAT! will automatically print it on as many horizontal pages as necessary. Other report tools usually truncate the report when it hits the right side of the page. ReportDAT! also has Shrink to Page that will try and fit the entire crosstab report onto one page if possible."

I found his answer clear and to the point. The only disadvantage to email-based tech support is waiting for the responses. Some software authors are almost continuously online, and may provide an answer within an hour or two. Here, the wait may be a day or two.

Room for improvement

All things considered, some of this will sound petty. You've got this wonderful set of manuals. It would be nice if the manual had a cover page. It starts with the Table of Contents. Yeah, ok. It's trivial. As I said earlier, it would really be nice if this was for ABC as well as the legacy templates. I've already discussed the work-around, so its not like we can't live without an ABC set - but it would be nice.

The documentation was written pre-C5EE and, based on the meticulousness of the writing, I suspect there will be changes made. I mention this only because some of the screens produced by C5EE are slightly different from those shown in the manual. For example, the Report Properties screen doesn't show the yield checkbox. (It only made me nervous for a moment.) Then there's the license agreement that mentions which dlls may be distributed. Unfortunately, the list doesn't match the actual names as shown in the ship list.

Lets do the numbers

At the end of every product evaluation we rate the product, but I suspect you can sort of guess what these ratings will be. This is an extraordinary product with excellent documentation (developer and user), compatibility with other 3^rd party products, and is very easy to use.

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

Vendor comments from Greg McClure of Grebar Systems

Thanks for the terrific review on ReportDAT! Express. I should point out that we do offer free tech support by phone for users that need an answer right away and it is staffed 9-5 (Central Time) Monday through Friday. They can reach tech support or pre-sales at 1-204-942-3301. E-Mails are usually answered within 24 hours.

ReportDAT! Express will create crosstab reports which summarizes data into a 2 dimensional grid. It doesn't simply list data from the file. The user can for example, create a monthly sales report by selecting the InvoiceMonth field for the column titles, and ProductDescription field for the row titles. The report will SUM the ItemTotals field from the ItemDetail file. ReportDAT! will then produce a report with "Jan'98" "Feb'98" ... "Dec'98" as columns across the top of the report and "Bicycles", "Hammers", "Nails", "Televisions" as row titles. The intersection of the row and column will show the total Sales $ for "Bicycles" sold in "May'98". Each cell value could be the result of summing a field from one or thousands of records. Row and Column totals are automatically calculated. The row total in this report will show the Sales $ for bicycles sold in all the months and the column totals will show the Sales $ for all products for each month. The Grand Total at the bottom right of the report will show the Sales$ for all products sold in all the months. All of the totals, cell summations, field layouts, and sorting is done by ReportDAT! Express. What's really "neat" about this report is that it works on your raw data files, namely Invoice and Invoice Detail, without having to run a separate pre-processing step to sort or prepare the data. ReportDAT! does all that for you. ReportDAT! Express isn't limited to just summing values. It can also COUNT records, perform AVERAGES, calculate MIN or MAX values, and do Standard Deviation and Variances on fields in a file. ReportDAT! Express gives the user the ability to observe their data from an "arial view", to see the forest instead of just the trees. ReportDAT! Express can be used to summarize sales information to show which products are selling and which are not, or report on student grades showing the grading differences between teachers or schools, print medical results for patients that flag borderline results, show population demographics of gender versus income, and has hundreds of other uses that can't be done using conventional reports.

ReportDAT! Express is available direct from Grebar Systems or from Topspeed via the Accessories program, and lists for $249. Upgrade pricing is available from prior versions - contact Grebar for details.

More information can be found at http://www.mbnet.mb.ca/grebar and also at http://www.topspeed.com. The ReportDAT! Express demo can be downloaded from either location (about 3 megs). If you own the C5EE, you will also find the demo located on the CD in the \THRDPTY\REPRTDAT folder (must be the release CD, not a beta).

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