User-Defined Reports - Multiple File Output

User-Defined Reports allow the option to create a text file as the output rather than outputting a report to a printer. This facility is usually used to create a CSV file to interface with other application or to create a BACS payment file to upload to your bank. The output process only allowed for the creation of one file from any one report – this new feature allows you to create multiple files from the same report. To enable the creation of an output file from a User-Defined Report you need to set the output filename within the Tools / Report Options parameter screen.

Specify the Full Pathname of the Disk File to be Created – here you set the filename of the text file to be created from the profiler user-defined report.Where the report is to create multiple files however you just specify a ‘holding’ filename here – the existence of a filename within this option enables additional options within the $SUBTOTAL report configuration.

With the exception of the facility to allow the pathname to be confirmed, which is not applicable within multiple file creation, the remaining options for formatting of the text file on this parameter screen apply equally in single or multi-file creation mode.

To create the multiple text files you need to set an additional parameter to the $SUBTOTAL control block, the $SUBTOTAL block allows you to specify a BREAK condition and a SAVEFILE setting. In general use the BREAK condition prints the sub-total on change of a data item, in file creation mode it is used in conjunction with the SAVEFILE setting to control where one text file ends and the next begins.



In setting the SAVEFILE options you are asked for the path and filename to be created. If you specified a standard filename then the file would overwrite each time but you can also use ‘!nnn’ (where nnn is a data item number) to use the content of a field on the last record processed before the sub-total, in addition you can use ‘ACCUMnnn’ and ‘CONSTnnn’ to be replaced with values from the accumulator and constant files respectively.

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