Now, you have to maintain all three of
those reports, and any changes or mistakes you find or an analyst finds, you will
have to fix in all three reports.
Report Parameters
[ 116 ]
The solution to this problem is to parameterize your report. In a simple scenario
such as this, it becomes obvious that if you created a few parameters, such as one for
department and a few to handle date ranges, you would then only have to maintain
one report for all the departments and time frames that would be requested. By
parameterizing, you are taking a larger number of reports needed to be maintained
and verified and reducing it to a more manageable number. This becomes useful
because, more often than not, report requests remain very similar.
Now, take a step back and let's look at something we haven't addressed up until
now. Let's say that each department that runs the report wants its header or
department logo to be displayed in the report. Now we are looking at something
other than data-centric issues, and moving into the realm of layout-specific issues.
With BIRT, we also have the ability to address these kinds of visual requirements.
For example, if the manager from the accounting department wanted alternating row
colors, but the other managers did not, we could easily create a Report Parameter
that would ask the report user if he or she wanted to add alternating row colors.
Pages:
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120