WHAT IS REPORT COMPOSER®?

Report Composer® is an application report development tool especially designed and developed for CA GEN (formerly known as AllFusion Gen, Advantage Gen and Cool:Gen). Developers using Report Composer can extend the benefits of model driven development to application reports and sequential file I/O.

Report Composer’s strength emerges from its ability to generate External Action Block (EAB) code for all Gen target platforms.  The different EAB design formats that Report Composer supports are: Canam Reports, Crystal Reports, File Handlers, and Pack/ Unpack. Canam Report EABs can be used to produce application reports in Plain Text, HTML or PDF format. Crystal Report EABs allow Gen users to interface with Crystal Reports from within Gen applications and then view the report locally or on the web. File handler EABs support the reading and writing of positional (single and multiple format layout) or delimited sequential files. Pack/unpack EABs provide fast concatenation/unstring functionality for Gen applications.
HOW DOES IT WORK?

Application reports developed with Report Composer have two distinct parts - the Data Retrieval Layer and the Presentation Layer.

Data Retrieval Layer

Data retrieval logic is implemented with Gen Action Diagrams. The architecture of the reporting transaction depends on the topology of the application (e.g. batch, monolithic, client-server, web etc.)

Presentation Layer

The report presentation logic is located in an External Action Block (EAB) generated by Report Composer. The EAB takes care of all report formatting such as control breaks, field edit patterns, and appropriate behavior of report
sections (e.g. printing page headers at the beginning of each page and report
footers at the end of the report), subreport handling and many more presentation
related tasks.
 
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF USING REPORT COMPOSER® ?

Report Composer benefits

Model driven application report development.
Reduction of software costs with a single reporting solution for all Gen platforms.
Superior performance over other reporting solutions with high-performance reporting that is secure and tuned.
Faster project delivery at lower costs.
Reduced training cost because Report Composer is developed for the Gen developer.
Lower application maintenance costs with Report Composer's automated version control.

Report Composer is a Registered Trademark of Canam Software Labs, Inc.