Setting It Up and Running a Report

The Windward Reports system is client-server. Even though it's possible to run both components on a single system, there are distinct client and server pieces. The server is written in Java and must be started before any reports can be run. The Getting Started Guide explains how to start the server.

Following the instructions in the Programmer's Guide, I created a simple report template in Microsoft Word, wrote a small .NET program to attach a data source, and passed it all off to the server. Everything worked as expected, and adding more complexity to the report template was very easy. In a very short time, I had a nicely formatted listing of my address book — certainly a whole lot nicer than the report I had cobbled together in my old Delphi program years ago.

Using some other data, I experimented with some of the fancier formatting features and even played with the graphing and charting, which is often a place where reporting tools fall down. Windward Reports' charting is done well, with some good examples and explanations in the Template Creator's Guide.

AutoTag

One of the problems of using Microsoft Word as the layout engine is that you have to enter report layout commands in text. For example, here's a report tag used to create a chart in one of the supplied samples:

<wr:chart select="select CustomerID from Customers
  where CustomerID like 
  'A%' order by CustomerID" type="BAR" 
  orientation="vertical" schema="default" 
  title="@Shipping Costs" x-label="@Shipped Date"
  y-label="@Freight Charges"
  data-type="CATEGORY" row-title="@${row.CustomerID}"
  column-select="select * from Orders
    where CustomerID = '${row.CustomerID}'
    and OrderID < 10508" x-value="@${column.ShippedDate}"
    y-value="@${column.Freight}"/>

That's the disadvantage of using a text editor or word processor as a layout engine: template commands are mixed with text in the document. This is not as much of a problem as it first appears. Windows Help tools have used similar techniques for years, and users get accustomed to it very quickly.

Users do often have trouble remembering how to create those lines of code, and any help that you can give them is greatly appreciated. The folks at Windward Studios developed something that they call AutoTag, a Microsoft Word add-in that simplifies creating and validating Windward Reports tags. This feature is a huge boon to users who just want to create report templates without having to learn all the intricacies of what is essentially a small programming language. I suspect that even programmers will find AutoTag very useful.