Xafari Reports
The reporting system is an integral part of any enterprise application. Xafari Reports focused on the use of "hard" business objects and allow to get different output formats of the same report. The developer has complete freedom in the implementation of the data source and its populating algorithm that can satisfy a variety of customer requirements.
DevExpress XAF provides reporting module Reports V2 Module. It is very convenient and functional, it allows to create arbitrary reports directly at runtime. The developer can work with the report designer in Visual Studio directly. DevExpress reporting system produces reports for any business object.
However, with the increasing complexity of management systems, reports are also become more complex, there are new requirements for centralized administration of settings. There is a number of reasons, requiring to extend basic reporting system. The most important reasons are listed below:
- Standard XAF reports is focused to print or entity instance or registry. However, in practice there are many reports that are based on multiple business objects with complex data structures and algorithms for filling the structure.
- Report parameters in corporate systems often have very complex structure, may include dozens of fields and collections, various filters with single or multiple values. Must be able to store a set of report parameters for future use.
- As it turns out, the business logic of the formation of a data structure for the report can be very difficult, so it is necessary that the programmer can implement own algorithm to formation a report. Developer is convenient to consider the report as a data structure with the parameters and populating algorithm.
- A number of reports requires multiple visual representations: printed reports, graphs, pivot table, upload a file, and so on. Moreover, the user himself must decide to what a visual form will present a report.
It is very important that both the reporting system DevExpress XAF and Xafari can be used in conjunction configuration and it was completely transparent.
To see the Xafari Reports in action, refer to the Northwind.DC Demo installed with Xafari. To start work select Xafari Reports|Deploy demo reports item in the navigation control and double click it, then press F5, to refresh ARM panel.
To generate Orders report, double click Xafari Reports|Orders|Orders of the 1st item, specify template and press Generate report button.
The end user can view, administrate and run reports. You can create, store and customize a variety of report templates using the wizards and visual designers. You can create, store and customize sets of parameters, which are used to sample the data report. You can create, store and customize sets of parameters, which are used to select the report data. If application uses the ARM navigation system, there is a special navigation item for access to the reports - ArmItemReport.
To learn more about Xafari Reports, refer to the following topics: