How to create a simple report

The report-writer in Visual FoxPro has been around for years and never really changed fundamentally. Building reports is straightfoward and easy. Servoy has an unusual (for us that is) way of creating simple reports. In Servoy a form can contain report bands such as a Title Header, Leading and Trailing Subsummary bands, Trailing Grand Summary band, Footer etc.

If that is not enough a third party tool called Jason Reports can be used to fulfill your more advanced reporting needs. For now lets build a simple report based on the example database.

Select the example database in the Solution Explorer
From the List View window select the customers table
Right-click the customers table and choose Create new form
In the dialog choose a form name such as frmCustomersReport and press Next

Create form/report dialog

Select some fields

Select some fields and press Finish
At the bottom of the form designer select the Parts tab
Add a Title Header and Footer band

Parts tab

Return to the Design tab
Resize the bands according to the image below by dragging the grey tabs on the right
Reorder the fields if necessary

Resize bands and reorder fields

Using shapes and lines add some visual enhancements to your report
Add a textbox and type Customers in the text property
Set the horizontal alignment of the textbox to CENTER
Set the Fonttype to Tahoma,bold,24

Add visual enhancements

Run the form
From the File menu select Print Preview or press Ctrl+U

Run the form

Set the printing preferences and margins to suit your needs
Preview the report and print it if you like what you see

Printing Preview

Conclusion

When running a report-form you will notice that it functions both as a form and as a report. You can still filter data and change sorting and then print with those user based settings!