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Quick Reports: CatBase Version 7

Note: If you are using Version 8, the interface for Quick Reports has changed. Please see this page.

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Quick Reports offer a quick and easy way to produce reports on your data. They are useful when you want to create a report that doesn't need to be formatted like published data - for example, a list of contacts and their phone numbers, or a list of images that have been used in your products.

You can print the report, export it to a tab-delimited text file (which you can open up in a spreadsheet), or create HTML pages.

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Opening the Quick Report Editor

The first thing you need to do is find the records that you want to include in your report:

  • Select the appropriate data table in the main tabs

  • Find the records you want to include in the report

  • NOTE: If you have related data in your database, please read the section "A note about related data", below.

  • With your list of records displayed, click on the Report button:

Report button

The Quick Report Editor opens up:

The top area of the editor shows the columns that will be included in your report (none at the moment!)

Adding columns to the report

There are two ways to add columns:

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  • Drag a field name into the Sort order area: do this for the field or fields that you want to sort your report on

  • Double-click on a field name

 

As an example, let's suppose we want to create a report listing all Product Names and their main picture names, and we want it sorted by Product Name.

  1. Scroll down in the list of fields to Product Name

  2. Drag and drop Product Name into the Sort order area

  3. Find the field Main Picture and double-click on it

  4. We will now see the Product Name shown in the Sort order area, and the column area will look like this:

You can make various adjustments to the columns:

  • Resize them as you do in a spreadsheet.

  • Choose the font and style for an entire column or for rows by using the formatting controls in the area above the columns

  • Add totals and other summary calculations by clicking in a Total row cell and choosing a function from the Cells menu

A note about related data

You can include data from a related table in your report, but if you have a "many-to-many" data relationship, this will not work reliably. A many-to-many relationship exists when you have multiple "child" records related to multiple "parent" records - for example, Products and Parts: each Product can have any number of Parts related to it, and each Part can be related to any number of Products. (Please see our Database 101 tutorial for more info about database relations.) In this case, it would be better to create a Publishing Style Sheet and choose the Plain Text option for your Publishing Destination.

To include data from a related table:

  • You must start out with a list of records from the "many" table. For example, if you have Products and Parts, Parts is the many table. If you have Companies and Employees, Employees is the many table. It's the "child" table in the relationship.

  • The list of fields that initially appears in the Quick Report field list is from the many table. To include fields from the "one", or "parent" table, choose Related Tables from the popup menu above the field list.

  • The list of fields will then change a little. Scroll down until you see the relation indicator.

  • ​Click on the table that you want to get related data from - eg Products in this example. The field list changes again, to show the fields from the Products table:

Now you can add fields from that table to your report

NOTE: Relations in CatBase can either be Required or not. If the Required option is selected for a relation, a child record cannot be saved unless it has been linked to a parent record. Only Required relations will appear in the Related Tables dropdown menu in the Quick Report editor. To change this option for any relation:

  1. Choose Admin from the main tabs.

  2. Expand the Database Setup topic on the left of the window and select Table and Field Setup.

  3. Select Manage Relations from the sub-tabs.

  4. Double-click on the relation you want to manage (the arrow line between the two related tables).

  5. Select the Parent record is required checkbox.

  6. Save it.

Creating the report

By default, the report will be printed when you run it. You can change this if you want to send the report to a text or HTML file:

  • Click on the File menu (the File menu within the Report Editor, not the main File menu at the top of the window)and move your mouse down to Destination.

  • Choose your desired output destination from the flout menu.

To produce the report, choose Generate ... from the File menu.

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